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THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 


"Books  by  TBrander  Matthews: 

ESSAYS  AND  CRITICISMS 

French  Dramatists  of  the  igth  Century 
Pen  and  Ink,  Essays  on  subjects  of  more 

or  less  importance 

Aspects  of  Fiction,  and  other  Essays 
The  Historical  Novel,  and  other  Essays 
Parts  of  Speech,  Essays  on  English 
The  Development  of  the  Drama 
Inquiries  and  Opinions 
The  American  of  the  Future,  and  other 

Essays 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE 
FUTURE 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


BY 

BRANDER  MATTHEWS 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1909 


Copyright,  1909,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  October,  1909 


TO  WM.  M.  POLK 

PHYSICIAN  AND  FRIEND 


' 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A  The  American  of  the  Future    ....  3 

II  American  Character  .......  2^ 

III  The  Americans  and  the  British     .     .     .  .,  59 

IV  "Blood  is  Thicker  than  Water"  ...  85 
V  The  Scream  of  the  Spread-Eagle    .     .     .  113 

VI  American  Manners  ....... 


VII  American  Humor      .......        >i 

\ 

VIII  The  Speech  of  the  People     .....  179 

IX  English  as  a  World-Language      ...  197 

X  Simplified  Spelling  and  <(Fonetic  Reform"  2  19 

*/  XI  The  Question  of  the  Theater    .     .     .     .  235 

XII  Persuasion  and  Controversy     ....  263 

,  XlII  Reform  and  Reformers  .....    ^$8$ 

"  XIV  "  Those  Literary  Fellows"  .....  3°9 

XV  Standards  of  Success     ......  333 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 


[This  address  was  delivered  before  the  American  Library 
Association  at  Narragansett  Pier,  on  July  4,  1906.] 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE   FUTURE 

ONE  Monday  in  the  spring  of  1906  a  New 
York  morning  paper  recorded  the  fact 
that  "ten  thousand  men,  women  and  children, 
immigrants  from  all  sections  of  the  globe,  were 
inside  New  York  harbor  before  sundown  yester 
day,  as  many  more  were  on  big  immigrant  ves 
sels  reported  off  Sandy  Hook  and  three  times 
ten  thousand  on  other  vessels  little  more  than 
two  hundred  miles  from  port.  All  told,  at  least 
fifty-two  thousand  immigrants  will  have  reacht 
port  by  Thursday  morning,  the  largest  number 
that  has  yet  come  to  New  York  at  one  time." 
The  new-comers  belonged  to  many  different 
nationalities.  Some  came  from  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland;  some  from  Germany  and  Aus 
tria;  some  from  Russia  and  Poland;  and  more 
from  Italy.  The  reporter  noted  that  there  were 
also  a  few  French  and  a  few  Arabians. 

More  than  fifty  thousand  in  four  days! — and 
these  were  only  the  advance  guard  of  the  host 
that  followed  fast  all  thru  the  lengthening  days 
of  the  spring  months.  Men  and  women  and 
children  from  every  part  of  Europe,  even  from 
3 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 

Africa  and  from  Asia,  poured  into  New  York 
to  scatter  themselves  thruout  the  United  States. 
A  few  of  them  intended  to  work  only  during  the 
summer  and  then  to  return  whence  they  came; 
but  the  most  of  them  were  resolved  to  lead  a  new 
life  in  the  New  World.  They  wisht  to  better 
themselves;  and  they  did  not  pause  to  ask  whether 
we  wanted  them  or  whether  their  coming  was 
for  our  good  also.  They  left  us  to  ask  these 
questions,  and  to  find  such  answer  as  we  could. 

Wide  and  unguarded  stand  our  gates, 

And  thru  them  presses  a  wild  motley  throng — 

Men  from  the  Volga  and  the  Tatar  steppes, 

Featureless  figures  of  the  Hoang-Ho, 

Malayan,  Scythian,  Teuton,  Kelt  and  Slav, 

Flying  the  Old  World's  poverty  and  scorn; 

These  bringing  with  them  unknown  gods  and  rites, 

Those,  tiger  passions,  here  to  stretch  their  claws. 

O  Liberty,  white  Goddess!  is  it  well 
To  leave  the  gates  unguarded? 

For  so  of  old 

The  thronging  Goth  and  Vandal  trampled  Rome, 
And  where  the  temples  of  the  Caesars  stood 
The  lean  wolf  unmolested  made  her  lair. 

In  these  lofty  lines  Aldrich  sharply  phrased 

what    many    Americans    vaguely    feared.     The 

motley   horde   that   invades   us  hopes  to  better 

its  condition;   but  what  of  our  condition?    What 

4 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE   FUTURE 

effect  will  Malayan  and  Scythian  and  Slav 
have  upon  us  ?  Are  they  worthy  to  be  welcomed 
within  our  commonwealth?  Will  they  trample 
America  as  the  thronging  Goth  and  Vandal 
trampled  Rome?  Must  we  dread  the  coming 
of  a  day  when  the  lean  wolf  unmolested  shall 
make  her  lair  in  the  deserted  streets  where  once 
the  many  churches  stood,  the  stately  libraries 
and  the  frequent  schoolhouses  ? 

Our  inexpugnable  optimism  is  prompt  to  dis 
miss  this  dire  possibility;  and  it  is  still  our  pride 
to  proffer  a  refuge  to  the  opprest  But  the 
danger-signal  has  been  heeded;  and  the  gates 
are  no  longer  unguarded.  The  "  featureless 
figures  of  the  Hoang-Ho"  are  denied  admission; 
and  the  wisdom  of  this  exclusion  is  evident, 
however  harsh  we  may  sometimes  seem  in  its 
application.  These  orientals  have  a  civiliza 
tion,  older  than  ours,  hostile  to  ours,  exclusive 
and  repellent.  They  do  not  come  here  to  throw 
in  their  lot  with  us.  They  abhor  assimilation 
and  they  have  no  desire  to  be  absorbed.  They 
mean  to  remain  aliens;  they  insist  upon  being 
taken  back  when  they  are  dead, — and  we  do 
well  to  keep  them  out  while  they  are  alive. 

We  exclude  also  with  equal  wisdom  the  maimed 

and  the  halt  and  the  blind.    We  refuse  to  receive 

the  wastrel  and  the  broken  driftwood  of  humanity ; 

— in  a  single  year  we  have  sent  back  whence  they 

5 


THE   AMERICAN   OF  THE   FUTURE 

came  twelve  thousand  undesirable  immigrants, 
some  of  them  insane,  some  of  them  diseased,  but 
most  of  them  mere  weaklings  likely  soon  to  be 
come  dependent.  We  have  accepted  the  prin 
ciple  that  it  is  our  duty  to  defend  our  coasts 
against  an  undesirable  invasion.  We  are  glad 
still  to  provide  a  refuge  for  the  opprest,  but  only 
when  those  who  demand  hospitality  are  fit  to 
be  incorporated  in  our  body  politic  and  only 
when  they  are  willing  to  accept  loyally  the  laws 
under  which  they  seek  shelter.  Of  late  we  have 
been  putting  hard  questions  to  all  new  arrivals 
at  our  ports,  and  if  they  have  no  answer  ready, 
the  gates  are  closed  in  their  faces.  We  have 
seen  in  time  the  danger  of  a  liberality  too  lax; 
and  we  have  recognized  the  sagacity  of  the  late 
Mayo-Smith's  saying  that  those  "who  desire 
that  the  United  States  should  discharge  the 
function  of  a  world-asylum  forget  that  asylums 
are  not  governed  by  their  inmates." 

But  there  are  those  among  us  who  are  not  sat 
isfied  with  this  setting  up  of  barriers  against  the 
unfit,  and  who  see  a  menace  to  American  stand 
ards  in  the  admission  even  of  the  physically  fit, 
if  they  come  from  alien  stocks.  There  are  those 
— and  they  are  not  a  few — who  would  keep  out 
the  "men  from  the  Volga  and  the  Tatar  steppes" 
and  all  "bringing  with  them  unknown  gods  and 
rites."  Willing  enough  still  to  welcome  Teuton 
6 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 

and  even  Celt,  they  see  peril  to  our  citizenship 
in  granting  it  to  Slav  and  to  Scythian,  with 
"  tiger  passions,  here  to  stretch  their  claws." 
They  look  askant  at  New  York  with  its  immense 
masses  of  imperfectly  assimilated  foreigners, 
with  its  Little  Italys,  with  its  mysterious  China 
town,  with  its  Syrian  quarter,  with  its  half- 
million  of  Russian  Jews.  They  ask  themselves 
whether  the  metropolis  of  the  United  States  can 
any  longer  be  considered  an  American  city. 

To  this  last  question  the  answer  is  easy.  New 
York  is  quite  as  American  to-day  as  it  ever  has 
been  in  any  of  its  three  centuries.  Diversity 
of  blood  has  always  been  its  dominant  character 
istic.  As  one  of  its  historians  has  tersely  asserted, 
"no  sooner  has  one  set  of  varying  elements  been 
fused  together  than  another  stream  has  been 
poured  into  the  crucible.  There  probably  has 
been  no  period  in  the  city's  growth  during  which 
the  New  Yorkers  whose  parents  were  born  in 
New  York  formed  the  majority  of  the  popula 
tion;  and  there  never  has  been  a  time  when  the 
bulk  of  the  citizens  were  of  English  blood." 
The  history  of  the  metropolis  from  which  these 
quotations  are  taken  was  written  by  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  a  typical  New  Yorker  as  he  is  a  typical 
American;  and  he  illustrates  in  his  own  person 
this  commingling  of  stocks.  He  is  of  Dutch 
descent,  with  other  ancestors  who  were  Huguenot 
7 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 

and  Scotch-Irish;  and  he  has  declared  that  so 
far  as  he  himself  is  aware,  he  has  not  a  drop  of 
English  blood  in  his  veins. 

The  diversity  of  origin  is  nothing  new  in 
American  cities,  and  equally  old  is  the  dread  of 
the  successive  new-comers.  It  is  a  curious  feature 
of  the  settlement  of  this  country, — so  Mr.  Roose 
velt  pointed  out  elsewhere  in  his  vigorous  nar 
rative  of  the  development  of  his  native  city,— 
"that  each  mass  of  immigrants  feels  much  dis 
trust  and  contempt  for  the  mass— usually  of  a 
different  nationality — which  comes  a  genera 
tion  later."  There  is  piquancy  in  the  fact  that 
the  chief  immigration  into  New  York  City  in 
the  thirty  or  forty  years  following  the  Revolution 
was  of  English  stock  from  Connecticut  and 
Massachusetts,  and  that  the  old  New  Yorkers 
regarded  this  New  England  invasion  with  jealous 
hostility.  Some  of  these  old  New  Yorkers  were 
descendants  of  the  original  Dutch,  and  of  the 
Walloons  and  Huguenots  who  had  come  over 
while  the  little  town  was  still  New  Amsterdam; 
and  some  were  descendants  of  the  English,  the 
Scotch,  the  Scotch-Irish  and  the  Germans,  who 
had  arrived  in  increasing  numbers  in  the  cen 
tury  between  the  downfall  of  Peter  Stuyvesant 
and  the  first  public  appearance  of  Alexander 
Hamilton  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution. 

The  New  Englanders  were  swiftly  assimilated 
8 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 

as  the  Huguenots  had  been  a  century  earlier; 
and  they,  in  turn,  disliked  and  dreaded  the  Irish 
invasion  that  followed  soon,  and  the  later  Ger 
man  invasion  that  came  before  and  during  the 
Civil  War.  But  in  that  bitter  conflict  the  Irish 
and  the  Germans  and  their  children  proved  them 
selves  stanch  Americans;  they  revealed  their  be 
lief  that  this  was  not  only  a  good  land  to  live  in 
but  a  good  country  to  die  for.  And  the  Irish 
and  the  Germans  in  their  turn  also  disliked  and 
dreaded  the  more  recent  invasion  of  the  Italians 
and  of  the  Russian  Jews;  and  they  joined  with 
the  older  New  Yorkers  in  wondering  whether 
these  strange  new-comers  were  not  unfit  for  the 
citizenship  which  had  been  generously  granted 
to  them.  Yet  there  is  scarcely  a  larger  proportion 
of  foreigners  in  the  population  of  New  York,  at 
the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  than 
there  was  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth;  nor  are 
the  dangerous  elements  proportionately  larger 
now  than  they  were  then.  The  fire  still  glows 
beneath  the  crucible  and  the  process  of  fusing  is 
as  rapid  and  as  complete  to-day  as  ever  it  has 
been  in  the  past.  The  children  are  the  flux  for 
this  fusing;  they  are  taken  captive  first  by  the 
schools,  and  then  the  public  libraries  bind  them 
fast;  and  finally  the  young  folks  react  on  their 
parents.  Sooner  or  later,  the  foreigners  are  made 
over;  they  are  born  anew;  and  they  have  a  proud 
9 


THE   AMERICAN   OF   THE   FUTURE 

consciousness   that   they   have   come   into   their 
birthright. 

When  Maxim  Gorky  was  asked  what  had 
most  imprest  him  on  his  arrival  in  New  York, 
he  answered  that  it  was  the  bodily  bearing  of  the 
throngs  in  the  streets.  "They  stand  erect,"  he 
said;  "they  do  not  cringe."  And  yet  a  large 
majority  of  the  men  who  made  up  the  throngs 
were  immigrants  or  the  sons  of  immigrants.  In 
their  native  land  they  may  not  have  been  allowed 
to  assert  their  manhood;  but  they  had  it  in  them 
to  assert  when  they  arrived  here  and  adjusted 
themselves  to  our  free  conditions.  And  their 
self-assertion  and  their  self-expression  have  been 
to  our  profit,  since  the  most  of  them  came  from 
stocks  which  had  been  denied  the  opportunity 
to  select  out  their  best.  They  have  brought 
undeveloped  possibilities  to  this  country  where 
careers  are  widely  opened  to  all  talents.  It 
needs  to  be  noted  that  two  of  the  most  distin 
guished  electrical  inventors  of  America  are  of 
Slavonic  birth.  That  shrewd  observer  of  social 
conditions,  Miss  Jane  Addams,  has  asserted  that 
we  talk  far  too  loosely  about  our  immigrants. 
We  use  the  phrase  "the  scum  of  Europe"  and 
other  unwarrantable  words,  "without  realizing 
that  the  undevelopt  peasant  may  be  much 
more  valuable  to  us  here  than  the  more  highly 
developt  but  also  more  highly  specialized  town- 
10 


THE   AMERICAN    OF   THE    FUTURE 

dweller,  who  may  much  less  readily  develop  the 
acquired  characteristics  which  the  new  environ 
ment  demands." 

"The   way   to   compare   men   is   to   compare 
their    respective    ideals,"    said    Thoreau;     "the 
actual  man  is  too  complex  to  deal  with."     In 
some    mysterious    fashion    we    Americans    have 
imposed   our   ideals   on   the   Irish   and   on   the 
Germans,  as  we  are  now  imposing  them  on  the 
Italians  and  on  the  Russian  Jews.     The  children 
and  the  grandchildren  of  these  ignorant  immi 
grants  learn  to  revere  Washington  and  Lincoln, 
and  they  take  swift  pride  in  being  Americans. 
They   thrill   in   response   to   the   same   patriotic 
appeals  which  move  us  of  the  older  stocks;   and 
when  the  nation  celebrated,  in  1889,  the  cente 
nary  of  the  constitution  of  the  United  States,  no 
where  were  the  portraits  of  the  Father  of  the 
Country  more  frequent  than  here  in  New  York, 
and  in  its  Little  Italy  and  in  its  Ghetto.     When 
the  President  of  the  United  States  declared  that  a 
certain  friend  of  his  was  "the  most  useful  citizen 
of  New  York,"  he  named  not  a  native  but  a  man 
who  was  by  birth  a  Dane;   and  if  any  one  with 
equal   opportunity   for   knowing   should    under 
take  to  draw  up  a  list  of  the  five  most  useful  cit 
izens  of  New  York,  he  would  have  to  include  also 
one  Hebrew  of  German  birth.     If  this  observer 
should  extend  the  list  to  ten  he  would  be  forced 
ii 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 

to  set  down  the  name  of  another  German  Hebrew 
whose  service  to  the  public  good  has  been  quite 
as  indisputable. 

The  census  records  the  number  of  those  in 
our  cities  and  in  our  states  who  are  of  foreign 
birth  and  also  those  who  are  of  foreign  parent 
age;  and  these  figures  seem  to  suggest  that  there 
exists  among  us  a  mass  of  undigested  aliens.  But 
in  so  far  as  the  statistics  do  suggest  this  they  con 
vey  a  false  impression.  The  boys  and  girls  of 
Little  Italy  speak  English  as  fluently  as  they 
speak  Italian;  and  while  they  salute  the  flag  in 
school,  in  the  street  they  amuse  themselves 
with  'Little  Sally  Waters'  and  with  the  traditional 
games  of  Anglo-Saxon  youth.  Already  are  the 
intelligent  sons  of  Italian  immigrants  coming 
up  thru  the  high  schools  of  New  York  and  the 
City  College,  and  entering  the  graduate-depart 
ments  of  our  universities  to  fit  themselves  for 
the  higher  degrees.  It  is  not  uncommon  to  hear 
a  young  man  of  German  parentage  term  his 
own  father  "a  Dutchman."  The  sons  of  the 
Fatherland  often  forget  their  German,  and  their 
children  do  not  always  acquire  it.  A  prominent 
lawyer  of  New  York  is  the  nephew  of  a  prominent 
German  author;  and  he  told  me  once  that  he 
had  read  only  those  of  his  uncle's  works  which 
had  been  translated  into  English.  The  German 
theater  in  New  York  is  deserted  by  the  sons  and 


12 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 

daughters  of  the  older  Germans  who  subsidize 
it;  the  young  people  prefer  to  see  plays  in  the 
English  language  with  which  they  are  more  fa 
miliar. 

Even  among  the  immigrants  themselves,  the 
process  of  Americanization  is  sometimes  extraor 
dinarily  swift.  It  did  not  take  long  for  Galla- 
tin  and  Agassiz  and  Schurz  to  make  themselves 
at  home  here;  and  the  less  gifted  and  the  less  well 
educated  foreigner  has  an  even  stronger  incentive 
to  get  out  of  his  old-world  shell.  When  the  late 
Professor  Boyesen  went  to  Minnesota,  he  was 
surprized  to  find  that  his  fellow  Scandinavians 
preferred  to  speak  English  even  to  him;  and  it 
was  explained  to  him  that  the  return  to  their 
native  tongue  would  reveal  their  peasant  origin 
and  thus  testify  to  their  social  inferiority  to  a 
gentleman  who  had  been  graduated  from  the 
university  of  Upsala,  whereas  the  use  of  English 
lifted  them  all  to  the  lofty  tableland  of  American 
citizenship. 

The  process  of  assimilation,  at  work  now  under 
our  own  eyes,  was  visible  also  to  our  fathers  and 
to  our  forefathers.  Indeed,  there  is  no  stronger 
phenomenon  in  all  the  marvelous  history  of  civ 
ilization  than  this  very  process, — than  this  Ameri 
canization  of  countless  aliens,  generation  after 
generation,  with  no  violent  modification  of 
American  ideals.  Three  centuries  ago  "men  of 
13 


THE   AMERICAN   OF  THE   FUTURE 

sturdy  English  fiber  began  to  come  in  search  of 
mental,  religious  and  economic  freedom,"  as  an 
acute  student  of  social  conditions  has  phrased  it. 
"Daring  men  in  search  of  new  experiences  came 
as  adventurers  and  discoverers.  Men  of  moral 
daring  came  in  search  of  religious  and  civic 
freedom.  Men  of  industrial  and  commercial 
daring  came  in  search  of  larger  opportunity. 
These  men  establisht  ideals  and  set  standards 
and  created  tendencies  for  a  nation."  These 
standards,  these  ideals,  these  tendencies  still  sur 
vive  after  almost  three  hundred  years,  modified 
a  little,  no  doubt,  but  developt  only,  not  radically 
transformed,  and  never  renounced.  The  Ameri 
can  of  to-day,  whatever  his  descent,  has  most  of 
the  characteristics  of  the  American  of  yesterday. 
The  ideals  endure;  and  the  aspirations  have  not 
been  blunted  by  time  or  turned  aside  by  alien 
influences. 

It  is  true  enough  that  the  makers  of  America 
were  mainly  of  British  origin.  Benjamin  Frank 
lin  and  Washington  Irving  were  the  sons  of  immi 
grants,  one  English  and  the  other  Scotch.  But 
from  the  very  beginning  the  admixture  of  other 
elements  was  abundant,  most  obvious  in  New 
York  but  perceptible  even  in  New  England. 
Before  the  Revolution,  besides  the  Dutch  in 
New  York  there  were  Swedes  in  New  Jersey; 
in  Pennsylvania  there  were  Germans  and  Scotch- 
14 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE   FUTURE 

Irish;  and  in  New  York  and  South  Carolina 
there  were  Huguenots, — and  no  single  stock  has 
contributed  to  our  citizenship  so  many  men  of 
ability  in  proportion  to  its  numbers  as  this  sturdy 
and  stalwart  group  of  French  Protestants.  Thus 
we  see  that  there  is  no  basis  for  the  prevalent 
belief  that  the  people  of  the  United  States  were 
once  almost  purely  English  in  descent,  and  that 
they  have  been  diluted  by  foreign  admixture 
only  since  the  war  of  1812.  In  the  Louisiana 
Purchase  and  in  the  Northwest  Territory  there 
were  many  French  settlers;  and  men  of  Spanish 
descent  were  incorporated  by  the  acquisition  of 
Texas  and  of  California.  The  commingling  of 
these  many  bloods  during  our  first  century  of 
national  life  must  be  more  or  less  responsible 
for  the  divergence  now  obvious  between  American 
ideals,  American  standards  and  American  ten 
dencies,  on  the  one  hand,  and  British  ideals, 
British  standards  and  British  tendencies,  on  the 
other.  Both  sets  are  derived  from  the  same  root, 
from  the  ideals,  the  standards,  and  the  tendencies 
of  the  older  Anglo-Saxon  stock,  transplanted  in 
England  from  the  Teutonic  mainland  and  stimu 
lated  by  the  commingled  Hebrew  and  Greek  and 
Roman  ideals  of  modern  Christianity. 

It  is  well  for  us  to  recall  the  fact  that  the 
English  race  itself  was  of  many  mingled  strains, 
Celtic  and  Teutonic,  welded  into  unity  at  last, 


THE  AMERICAN   OF  THE   FUTURE 

and  achieving  its  richest  expression  under  Eliz 
abeth.  But  while  the  British  have  been  in 
breeding  for  centuries  now,  with  only  occasional 
enrichment  by  alien  stocks,  Spanish-Hebrew, 
Huguenot  and  German,  we  Americans  have  been 
absorbing  vigorous  foreign  blood;  and  to  this 
infusion  must  be  credited  some  portion  of  the 
differences  between  the  subjects  of  the  British 
king  and  the  citizens  of  the  American  republic. 
These  differences  are  abundant  and  they  are 
evident;  and  there  is  no  need  to  dwell  on  them 
here. 

It  is  the  testimony  of  many  of  the  intelligent 
Europeans  who  have  come  here  to  study  us  in 
recent  years  that  we  Americans  are  less  insular 
than  our  kin  across  the  sea,  less  set  in  our  ways, 
more  open-minded.  Senor  Juan  Valera,  some 
time  Spanish  Minister  in  Washington,  in  the 
preface  to  his  delightful  tale  of  'Pepita  Ximenes' 
declared  that  the  American  public  reads  a  great 
deal,  is  indulgent  and  "differs  from  the  British 
public — which  is  eminently  exclusive  in  its  tastes 
— by  its  cosmopolitan  spirit. "  It  may  be  said 
that  this  is  one  of  the  variances  between  the  Ameri 
cans  and  the  British  due  to  the  influence  exerted 
by  those  elements  in  our  population  which  are 
not  Anglo-Saxon  and  not  even  Teutonic.  Cecil 
Rhodes  once  scornfully  commented  on  the 
"unctuous  rectitude"  of  the  British;  and  Lowell 
16 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 

once  declared  that  "England  seems  to  be  the 
incarnation  of  the  'Kingdom  of  this  world.'" 
Neither  of  these  accusations  will  lie  against  us 
Americans,  open  as  we  may  be  in  other  respects 
to  the  conviction  of  sin.  Perhaps  the  reason  is 
to  be  found  in  the  influence  of  the  Celt,  of  the 
Huguenot  and  of  the  Irish.  To  this  same  Cel 
tic  softening  of  Teutonic  harshness  we  may 
ascribe  also  the  broader  development  here  of 
that  social  instinct  which  is  deficient  in  Great 
Britain  and  which  is  dominant  in  France.  This 
social  instinct  manifests  itself  in  manifold  forms, 
in  a  wider  sympathy,  in  a  friendlier  good  nature, 
in  a  more  thoro  toleration,  both  religious  and 
political.  It  has  contributed  its  share  to  the 
core  of  idealism  which  sustains  the  American 
character,  but  which  is  often  veiled  from  view 
by  sordid  externals. 

When  we  consider  all  these  things  carefully, 
we  cannot  help  wondering  whether  we  have  not 
been  guilty  of  flagrant  conceit  in  our  assumption 
that  we  could  not  possibly  profit  by  any  infusion 
of  other  bloods  than  the  Teutonic.  We  find 
ourselves  face  to  face  with  the  question  whether 
the  so-called  Anglo-Saxon  stock  is  of  a  truth  so 
near  to  perfection  that  any  admixture  is  certain 
to  be  harmful.  We  find  ourselves  doubting 
whether  this  stock  has  always  done  so  well  that 
it  has  an  undisputed  right  to  a  halo  on  demand. 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 

Much  as  we  owe  to  England,  we  have  other 
debts  also;  and  even  New  England,  of  which 
we  are  all  justly  proud,  is  not  now  the  focus  of 
the  whole  United  States. 

The  New  Englanders  long  ago  relapst  from 
orthodoxy  into  unitarianism,  and  then  their 
wavering  faith  faded  into  a  chilly  agnosticism, 
until  now  their  piety  often  takes  the  mild  form 
of  ancestor-worship,  revealed  in  not  a  few  of 
them  by  a  high  opinion  of  themselves  as  the  de 
scendants  of  their  sainted  forefathers.  But  to 
some  of  us  'My  Country!  'tis  of  Thee'  seems 
only  a  sectional  lyric,  by  a  bard  who  did  not  think 
nationally.  There  is  a  certain  significance  in 
the  fact  that  political  stability,  and  even  political 
sagacity,  have  been  most  evident  in  certain  of 
the  sections  where  the  foreign-born  citizens  are 
most  thickly  settled,  and  least  evident  in  certain 
other  sections  where  the  inhabitants  can  trace 
their  descent  to  forefathers  of  American  birth. 

All  that  the  New  Englanders  could  bring  over 
from  Great  Britain  was  a  British  standard;  and 
if  the  American  standard  now  differs  from  the 
British  standard  this  must  be  due,  more  or  less, 
to  the  pressure  exerted  in  America  by  a  contri 
bution  other  than  British.  If  we  to-day  prefer, 
as  we  do  undoubtedly,  the  existing  American 
standards  and  ideals  and  tendencies  to  the  British 
standards  and  ideals  and  tendencies,  we  must 
18 


THE   AMERICAN  OF  THE   FUTURE 

recognize  that  the  various  foreign  elements  in 
the  United  States  have  exerted  an  influence  satis 
factory  to  us  now,  however  much  our  forefathers 
may  once  have  dreaded  it.  We  must  recognize 
that  the  commingling  of  stocks  which  has  been 
going  on  here  in  the  past  has  been  beneficial— 
or  at  least  that  its  results  are  acceptable  to  us  at 
present.  And  in  all  probability  our  children  will 
admit  also  that  the  commingling  which  is  going 
on  in  the  present  and  which  will  go  on  in  the 
future,  is  likely  also  to  be  equally  acceptable 
and  equally  beneficial. 

The  strength  of  the  founders  of  the  American 
republic  lay  chiefly  in  character.  It  is  not  by 
brilliancy,  by  intellect  or  even  by  genius  that 
Washington  and  Jay  and  John  Adams  imprest 
themselves  on  their  fellow-citizens  in  Virginia, 
in  New  York,  and  in  Massachusetts.  Ability 
they  had  in  abundance,  no  doubt;  but  it  was 
by  character  they  conquered,  by  their  moral  in 
dividuality.  And  it  is  the  grossest  conceit  for 
us  to  assume  that  character  is  the  privilege  or 
the  prerogative  of  any  single  stock.  We  have  a 
right  to  hope,  and  even  to  believe,  that  whatever 
we  may  lose  by  the  commingling  of  the  future, 
by  the  admixture  of  other  racial  types  than  the 
Teutonic  and  the  Celtic,  will  be  made  up  to  us 
by  what  we  shall  thereby  gain.  Our  type  may 
be  a  little  transformed,  but  it  is  not  at  all  likely 
19 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 

to  be  deteriorated.  There  is  really  very  little 
danger  indeed  that  the  preaching  of  the  Puritans 
will  ever  be  superseded  here  by  the  practices  of 
the  Impuritans. 

It  is  true  that  the  latest  new-comers  are  not 
altogether  Teutonic  or  even  Celtic;  they  are 
Latin  and  Slav  and  Semitic.  But  it  is  only  a 
stubborn  pride,  singularly  out  of  place  in  an 
American  of  the  twentieth  century,  which  makes 
us  dread  evil  consequences  from  this  admixture. 
The  Teuton  here  has  been  suppled  by  the  Celt; 
but  the  resulting  race  may  benefit  still  by  attri 
butes  of  the  Latin  and  of  the  Slav.  The  suave 
manner  of  the  Italian  may  modify  in  time  the 
careless  discourtesy  which  discredits  us  now  in 
the  eyes  of  foreign  visitors.  The  ardor  of  the 
Slav  may  quicken  our  appreciation  of  music  and 
of  the  fine  arts.  Possibly  these  gains  may  have 
to  be  paid  for  by  a  little  relaxing  of  the  unresting 
energy  which  is  our  salient  characteristic  to-day. 
It  may  be  that  when  milder  strains  are  com 
mingled  with  the  Teutonic-Celtic  stock,  there 
will  be  other  modifications,  some  of  them  seem 
ingly  less  satisfactory.  But  there  is  no  reason 
to  suppose  that  in  the  future  we  shall  not  make 
our  profit  out  of  the  best  that  every  contributing 
blood  can  bring  to  us,  since  this  is  exactly  what 
we  have  been  doing  in  the  past. 

In  1900  there  were  ten  millions  of  the  foreign 

20 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 

born  here  in  the  United  States; — but  of  these 
three-quarters  were  of  English  or  Teutonic  or 
Celtic  blood,  the  very  elements  out  of  which 
first  the  British  and  then  the  Americans  have 
been  compounded.  That  is  to  say,  there  were 
less  than  three  million  out  of  some  seventy  mil 
lion  whites  that  the  most  rigid  stickler  for  racial 
purity  could  possibly  object  to.  In  1900  again 
there  was  only  a  million  of  these  foreign-born 
who  could  not  speak  English.  And  who  doubts 
that  the  children  of  this  million  are  now  busy 
acquiring  our  language  to  fit  themselves  for  the 
struggle  of  life?  These  children  are  indeed 
likely  to  look  upon  English  as  their  mother- 
tongue;  and  with  the  language  they  are  taking 
over  also  the  ideals  of  the  community  in  which 
they  are  growing  to  manhood, — ideals  which  the 
grandchildren  of  the  immigrants  will  have  ab 
sorbed  unconsciously.  It  is  well  for  us  to  re 
mind  ourselves  that  ideals  are  communal  and 
not  individual;  they  are  the  result  of  environ 
ment  and  not  of  heredity.  Ideals  are  not  born 
in  the  blood, — even  tho  instincts  may  be;  they 
are  taken  over  from  our  associates;  they  are 
implanted  by  the  group-feeling.  As  Lowell  once 
phrased  it  sharply,  "The  pressure  of  public 
opinion  is  like  the  pressure  of  the  atmosphere; 
— you  can't  see  it,  but  it  is  sixteen  pounds  to  the 
square  inch  none  the  less." 

21 


THE  AMERICAN  OF  THE  FUTURE 

We  need  not  fear  any  weakening  of  the  Teu 
tonic  framework  of  our  social  order.  Beyond 
all  question  we  shall  preserve  the  common  law 
of  England  and  the  English  language,— for 
these  are  priceless  possessions  in  which  the  wel 
come  invaders  are  glad  to  be  allowed  to  share. 
The  good  old  timbers  of  the  ship  of  state  are  still 
solid  and  the  sturdy  vessel  is  steered  by  the  same 
compass. 

One  of  the  best  equipt  observers  of  American 
life  and  one  of  the  shrewdest  also,  Professor 
Giddings,  faces  the  future  fearlessly.  He  holds 
that  in  the  coming  years  a  mixture  of  elements 
not  Anglo-Teuton  "will  soften  the  emotional 
nature"  and  " quicken  the  poetic  and  artistic 
nature"  of  the  American  people;  gentler  in  our 
thoughts  and  feelings  because  of  the  Alpine  strain 
(and  this  includes  the  Slav),  we  shall  find  our 
selves  "with  a  higher  power  to  enjoy  the  beauti 
ful  things  of  life  because  of  the  Celtic  and  the 
Latin  blood."  And  as  if  this  prophecy  of  emo 
tional  benefit  was  not  heartening  enough,  Pro 
fessor  Giddings  holds  up  to  us  the  high  hope  of 
an  intellectual  benefit  also;  probably  thru  the 
commingling  of  bloods  "we  shall  become  more 
clearly  and  fearlessly  rational,— in  a  word,  more 
scientific." 

(1906.) 

22 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 


[This  address  was  delivered  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  of 
Columbia  University  in  June,  1905;  and  it  was  repeated  at 
Rutgers  College  on  Charter  Day  in  November,  1905.] 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 


IN  a  volume  recording  a  series  of  talks  with 
Tolstoi,  publisht  by  a  French  writer  in  the 
final  months  of  1904,  we  are  told  that  the  Rus 
sian  novelist  thought  the  Dukhobors  had  attained 
to  a  perfected  life,  in  that  they  were  simple,  free 
from  envy,  wrath  and  ambition,  detesting  vio 
lence,  refraining  from  theft  and  murder,  and  seek 
ing  ever  to  do  good.  Then  the  Parisian  inter 
viewer  askt  which  of  the  peoples  of  the  world 
seemed  most  remote  from  the  perfection  to 
which  the  Dukhobors  had  elevated  themselves; 
and  when  Tolstoi  returned  that  he  had  given 
no  thought  to  this  question,  the  French  corre 
spondent  suggested  that  we  Americans  deserved 
to  be  held  up  to  scorn  as  the  least  worthy  of 
nations. 

The  tolerant  Tolstoi  askt  his  visitor  why  he 
thought  so  ill  of  us;  and  the  journalist  of  Paris 
then  put  forth  the  opinion  that  we  Americans 
are  "a  people  terribly  practical,  avid  of  pleas 
ure,  systematically  hostile  to  all  idealism.  The 

25 


AMERICAN   CHARACTER 


ambition  of  the  American's  heart,  the  passion 
of  his  life,  is  money;  and  it  is  rather  a  delight 
in  the  conquest  and  possession  of  money  than 
in  the  use  of  it.  The  Americans  ignore  the  arts; 
they  despise  disinterested  beauty.  And  now, 
moreover,  they  are  imperialists.  They  could 
have  remained  peaceful  without  danger  to  their 
national  existence;  but  they  had  to  have  a  fleet 
and  an  army.  They  set  out  after  Spain,  and 
attackt  her;  and  now  they  begin  to  defy  Eu 
rope.  Is  there  not  something  scandalous  in  this 
revelation  of  the  conquering  appetite  in  a  new 
people  with  no  hereditary  predisposition  toward 


warr 


It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  French  correspond 
ent  that  after  setting  down  this  fervid  arraign 
ment,  he  was  honest  enough  to  record  Tolstoi's 
dissent.  But  altho  he  dissented,  the  great 
Russian  expresst  little  surprize  at  the  virulence 
of  this  diatribe.  No  doubt  it  voiced  an  opinion 
familiarized  to  him  of  late  by  many  a  news 
paper  of  France  and  of  Germany.  Fortunately 
for  us,  the  assertion  that  foreign  nations  are 
a  contemporaneous  posterity  is  not  quite  true. 
Yet  the  opinion  of  foreigners,  even  when  most 
at  fault,  must  have  its  value  for  us  as  a  useful 
corrective  of  conceit.  We  ought  to  be  proud  of 
our  country;  but  we  need  not  be  vain  about  it. 
Indeed,  it  would  be  difficult  for  the  most  pa- 
26 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

triotic  of  us  to  find  any  satisfaction  in  the  fig 
ure  of  the  typical  American  which  apparently 
exists  in  the  mind  of  most  Europeans,  and  which 
seems  to  be  a  composite  photograph  of  the  back 
woodsman  of  Cooper,  the  negro  of  Mrs.  Stowe, 
and  the  Mississippi  river-folk  of  Mark  Twain, 
modified  perhaps  by  more  vivid  memories  of 
Buffalo  Bill's  Wild  West.  Surely  this  is  a  strange 
monster;  and  we  need  not  wonder  that  foreign 
ers  feel  towards  it  as  Voltaire  felt  toward  the  proph 
et  Habakkuk, — whom  he  declared  to  be  "  capa 
ble  of  anything." 

It  has  seemed  advisable  to  quote  here  what 
the  Parisian  journalist  said  of  us,  not  because 
he  himself  is  a  person  of  consequence,  indeed, 
he  is  so  obscure  that  there  is  no  need  even  to 
mention  his  name,  but  because  he  has  had  the 
courage  to  attempt  what  Burke  declared  to  be 
impossible, — to  draw  an  indictment  against  a 
whole  nation.  It  would  be  easy  to  retort  on 
him  in  kind,  for,  unfortunately, — and  to  the 
grief  of  all  her  friends, — France  has  laid  herself 
open  to  accusations  as  sweeping  and  as  violent. 
It  would  be  easy  to  dismiss  the  man  himself  as 
one  whose  outlook  on  the  world  is  so  narrow 
that  it  seems  to  be  little  more  than  what  he  can 
get  thru  a  chance  slit  in  the  wall  of  his  own  self- 
sufficiency.  It  would  be  easy  to  answer  him  in 
either  of  these  fashions,  but  what  is  easy  is  rarely 
27 


AMERICAN   CHARACTER 

worth  while;  and  it  is  wiser  to  weigh  what  he 
said  and  to  see  if  we  cannot  find  our  profit  in  it. 
Sifting  the  essential  charges  from  out  the 
mass  of  his  malevolent  accusation,  we  find  this 
Frenchman  alleging  first,  that  we  Americans 
care  chiefly  for  making  money;  second,  that  we 
are  hostile  to  art  and  to  all  forms  of  beauty;  and 
thirdly,  that  we  are  devoid  of  ideals.  These 
three  allegations  may  well  be  considered,  one  by 
one,  beginning  with  the  assertion  that  we  are 
mere  money-makers. 

II 

Now,  in  so  far  as  this  Frenchman's  belief  is 
but  an  exaggeration  of  the  saying  of  Napoleon's, 
that  the  English  were  a  nation  of  shopkeepers, 
we  need  not  wince,  for  the  Emperor  of  the 
French  found  to  his  cost  that  those  same  Eng 
lish  shopkeepers  had  a  stout  stomach  for  fight 
ing.  Nor  need  we  regret  that  we  can  keep  shop 
profitably,  in  these  days  when  the  doors  of  the 
bankers'  vaults  are  the  real  gates  of  the  Temple 
of  Janus,  war  being  impossible  until  they  open. 
There  is  no  reason  for  alarm  or  for  apology  so 
long  as  our  shopkeeping  does  not  cramp  our 
muscle  or  curb  our  spirit,  for,  as  Bacon  declared 
three  centuries  ago,  "  walled  towns,  stored  arse 
nals  and  armories,  goodly  races  of  horse,  chariots 
28 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

of  war,  elephants,  ordnance,  artillery  and  the 
like,  all  this  is  but  a  sheep  in  a  lion's  skin,  except 
the  breed  and  disposition  of  the  people  be  stout 
and  warlike." 

Even  the  hostile  French  traveler  did  not  ac 
cuse  us  of  any  flabbiness  of  fiber;  indeed,  he 
declaimed  especially  against  our  "  conquering 
appetite,"  which  seemed  to  him  scandalous  "in 
a  new  people  with  no  hereditary  predisposition 
toward  war."  But  here  he  fell  into  a  common 
blunder;  the  United  States  may  be  a  new  na 
tion — altho  as  a  fact  the  stars-and -stripes  is  now 
older  than  the  tricolor  of  France,  the  union- 
jack  of  Great  Britain  and  the  standards  of 
those  new-comers  among  the  nations,  Italy  and 
Germany, — the  United  States  may  be  a  new 
nation,  but  the  people  here  have  had  as  many 
ancestors  as  the  population  of  any  other  country. 
The  people  here,  moreover,  have  "a  hereditary 
predisposition  toward  war,"  or  at  least  toward 
adventure,  since  they  are,  every  man  of  them, 
descended  from  some  European  more  venture 
some  than  his  fellows,  readier  to  risk  the  perils 
of  the  Western  Ocean  and  bolder  to  front  the 
unknown  dangers  of  an  unknown  land.  The 
warlike  temper,  the  aggressiveness,  the  imperial 
istic  sentiment, — these  are  in  us  no  new  develop 
ment  of  unexpected  ambition;  and  they  ought 
not  to  surprize  any  one  familiar  with  the  way  in 
29 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

which  our  forefathers  graspt  this  Atlantic  coast 
first,  then  thrust  themselves  across  the  Alle- 
ghanies,  spread  abroad  to  the  Mississippi,  and 
reacht  out  at  last  to  the  Rockies  and  to  the  Pa 
cific.  The  lust  of  adventure  may  be  danger 
ous,  but  it  is  no  new  thing;  it  is  in  our  blood, 
and  we  must  reckon  with  it. 

Perhaps  it  is  because  "the  breed  and  disposi 
tion  of  the  people"  is  "stout  and  warlike"  that 
our  shopkeeping  has  been  successful  enough  to 
awaken  envious  admiration  among  other  races 
whose  energy  may  have  been  relaxt  of  late. 
After  all,  the  arts  of  war  and  the  arts  of  peace 
are  not  so  unlike;  and  in  either  a  triumph  can 
be  won  only  by  an  imagination  strong  enough  to 
foresee  and  to  divine  what  is  hidden  from  the 
weakling.  We  are  a  trading  community,  after 
all  and  above  all,  even  if  we  come  of  fighting 
stock.  We  are  a  trading  community,  just  as 
Athens  was,  and  Venice  and  Florence.  And  like 
the  men  of  these  earlier  commonwealths,  the  men 
of  the  United  States  are  trying  to  make  money. 
They  are  striving  to  make  money  not  solely  to 
amass  riches,  but  partly  because  having  money 
is  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  success, — be 
cause  it  is  the  most  obvious  measure  of  accom 
plishment. 

In  his  talk  with  Tolstoi  our  French  critic  re 
vealed  an  unexpected  insight  when  he  asserted 
30 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

that  the  passion  of  American  life  was  not  so 
much  the  use  of  money  as  a  delight  in  the  con 
quest  of  it.  Many  an  American  man  of  affairs 
would  admit  without  hesitation  that  he  would 
rather  make  half  a  million  dollars  than  inherit 
a  million.  It  is  the  process  he  enjoys,  rather 
than  the  result;  it  is  the  tough  tussle  in  the  open 
market  which  gives  him  the  keenest  pleasure, 
and  not  the  idle  contemplation  of  wealth  safely 
stored  away.  He  girds  himself  for  battle  and 
fights  for  his  own  hand;  he  is  the  son  and  the 
grandson  of  the  stalwart  adventurers  who  came 
from  the  Old  World  to  face  the  chances  of  the 
new.  This  is  why  he  is  unwilling  to  retire  as 
men  are  wont  to  do  in  Europe  when  their  for 
tunes  are  made.  Merely  to  have  money  does 
not  greatly  delight  him — altho  he  would  regret 
not  having  it;  but  what  does  delight  him  un 
ceasingly  is  the  fun  of  making  it. 

The  money  itself  often  he  does  not  know  what 
to  do  with;  and  he  can  find  no  more  selfish  use 
for  it  than  to  give  it  away.  He  seems  to  recog 
nize  that  his  making  it  was  in  some  measure  due 
to  the  unconscious  assistance  of  the  community 
as  a  whole;  and  he  feels  it  his  duty  to  do  some 
thing  for  the  people  among  whom  he  lives.  It 
must  be  noted  that  the  people  themselves  also 
expect  this  from  him;  they  expect  him  sooner 
or  later  to  pay  his  footing.  As  a  result  of  this 


v/ 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

pressure  of  public  opinion  and  of  his  own  lack 
of  interest  in  money  itself,  he  gives  freely.  In 
time  he  comes  to  find  pleasure  in  this  as  well; 
and  he  applies  his  business  sagacity  to  his  bene 
factions.  Nothing  is  more  characteristic  of  mod 
ern  American  life  than  this  pouring  out  of  private 
wealth  for  public  service.  Nothing  remotely  re 
sembling  it  is  to  be  seen  now  in  any  country  of 
the  Old  World;  and  not  even  in  Athens  in  its 
noblest  days  was  there  a  larger-handed  lavish- 
ness  of  the  individual  for  the  benefit  of  the  com 
munity. 

Again,  in  no  country  of  the  Old  World  is  the 
prestige  of  wealth  less  powerful  than  it  is  here. 
This,  of  course,  the  foreigner  fails  to  perceive; 
he  does  not  discover  that  it  is  not  the  man  who 
happens  to  possess  money  that  we  regard  with 
admiration  but  the  man  who  is  making  money, 
and  thereby  proving  his  efficiency  and  indirectly 
benefiting  the  community.  To  many  it  may 
sound  like  an  insufferable  paradox  to  assert 
that  nowhere  in  the  civilized  world  to-day  is 
money  itself  of  less  weight  than  here  in  the 
United  States;  but  the  broader  his  opportunity 
the  more  likely  is  an  honest  observer  to  come 
to  this  unexpected  conclusion.  Fortunes  are 
made  in  a  day  almost,  and  they  may  fade  away 
in  a  night;  as  the  Yankee  proverb  put  it  pithily, 
"it's  only  three  generations  from  shirt-sleeves 
32 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

to  shirt-sleeves."  Wealth  is  likely  to  lack  some 
thing  of  its  glamor  in  a  land  where  well-being 
is  widely  diffused  and  where  a  large  proportion 
of  the  population  have  either  had  a  fortune  and 
lost  it,  or  else  expect  to  gain  one  in  the  immedi 
ate  future. 

Probably  also  there  is  no  country  which  now 
contains  more  men  who  do  not  greatly  care  for 
large  gains  and  who  have  gladly  given  up  money- 
making  for  some  other  occupation  they  found 
more  profitable  for  themselves.  These  are  the 
men  like  Thoreau — in  whose  'Walden,'  now 
half  a  century  old,  we  can  find  an  emphatic  decla 
ration  of  all  the  latest  doctrines  of  the  simple  life. 
We  have  all  heard  of  Agassiz, — best  of  Ameri 
cans,  even  tho  he  was  born  in  another  republic, 
— how  he  repelled  the  proffer  of  large  terms  for 
a  series  of  lectures,  with  the  answer  that  he  had 
no  time  to  make  money.  Closely  akin  was  the 
reply  of  a  famous  machinist  in  response  to  an  in 
quiry  as  to  what  he  had  been  doing, — to  the  ef 
fect  that  he  had  accomplisht  nothing  of  late, 
— "we  have  just  been  building  engines  and  mak 
ing  money,  and  I'm  about  tired  of  it."  There 
are  not  a  few  men  to-day  in  these  toiling  United 
States  who  hold  with  Ben  Jonson  that  "money 
never  made  any  man  rich, — but  his  mind." 

But  while  this  is  true,  while  there  are  some 
men  among  us  who  care  little  for  money,  and 
33 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

while  there  are  many  who  care  chiefly  for  the 
making  of  it,  ready  to  share  it  when  made  with 
their  fellow-citizens,  candor  compels  the  ad 
mission  that  there  are  also  not  a  few  who  are 
greedy  and  grasping,  selfish  and  shameless,  and 
who  stand  forward,  conspicuous  and  unscrupu 
lous,  as  if  to  justify  to  the  full  the  aspersions, 
which  foreigners  cast  upon  us.  Altho  these  men 
manage  for  the  most  part  to  keep  within  the  letter 
of  the  law,  their  morality  is  that  of  the  wrecker  and 
of  the  pirate.  It  is  a  symptom  of  health  in  the 
body  politic  that  the  proposal  has  been  made  to 
inflict  social  ostracism  upon  the  criminal  rich. 
We  need  to  stiffen  our  conscience  and  to  set  up 
a  loftier  standard  of  social  intercourse,  refusing 
to  fellowship  with  the  men  who  make  their 
money  by  overriding  the  law  or  by  undermining  it, 
— just  as  we  should  have  declined  the  friendship 
of  Captain  Kidd  laden  down  with  stolen  treasure. 
In  the  immediate  future  these  men  will  be 
made  to  feel  that  they  are  under  the  ban  of  pub 
lic  opinion.  One  sign  of  an  acuter  sensitive 
ness  is  the  recent  outcry  against  the  acceptance 
of  "tainted  money"  for  the  support  of  good 
works.  Altho  it  is  wise  always  to  give  a  good 
deed  the  credit  of  a  good  motive,  yet  it  is  im 
possible  sometimes  not  to  suspect  that  certain 
large  gifts  have  an  aspect  of  "  conscience  money." 
Some  of  them  seem  to  be  the  result  of  a  desire 
34 


AMERICAN   CHARACTER 

to  divert  public  attention  from  the  evil  way  in 
which  the  money  was  made  to  the  nobler  man 
ner  in  which  it  is  spent.  They  appear  to  be  the 
attempt  of  a  social  outlaw  to  buy  his  peace  with 
the  community.  Apparently  there  are  rich  men 
among  us,  who,  having  sold  their  honor  for  a  price, 
would  now  gladly  give  up  the  half  of  their  for 
tunes  to  get  it  back. 

Candor  compels  the  admission  also  that  by 
the  side  of  the  criminal  rich  there  exists  the 
less  noxious  but  more  offensive  class  of  the  idle 
rich,  who  lead  lives  of  wasteful  luxury  and  of 
empty  excitement.  When  the  French  reporter 
who  talked  with  Tolstoi  called  us  Americans 
"avid  of  pleasure"  it  was  this  little  group  he 
had  in  mind,  as  he  may  have  seen  the  members 
of  it  splurging  about  in  Paris,  squandering  and 
self-advertizing.  Altho  these  idle  rich  now  ex 
hibit  themselves  most  openly  and  to  least  ad 
vantage  in  Paris  and  in  London,  their  foolish 
doings  are  recorded  superabundantly  in  our 
own  newspapers;  and  their  demoralizing  in 
fluence  is  spread  abroad.  The  snobbish  report 
of  their  misguided  attempts  at  amusement  may 
even  be  a  source  of  danger  in  that  it  seems  to 
recognize  a  false  standard  of  social  success  or 
in  that  it  may  excite  a  miserable  ambition  to 
emulate  these  pitiful  frivolities.  But  there  is  no 
need  of  delaying  longer  over  the  idle  rich;  they 
35 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

are  only  a  few,  and  they  have  doomed  them 
selves  to  destruction,  since  it  is  an  inexorable 
fact  that  those  who  break  the  laws  of  nature 
can  have  no  hope  of  executive  clemency. 

Patience  a  little;  learn  to  wait, 
Years  are  long  on  the  clock  of  fate. 

Ill 

THE  second  charge  which  the  wandering  Pari 
sian  journalist  brought  against  us  was  that  we 
ignore  the  arts  and  that  we  despise  disinter 
ested  beauty.  Here  again  the  answer  that  is 
easiest  is  not  altogether  satisfactory.  There  is 
no  difficulty  in  declaring  that  there  are  Ameri 
can  artists,  both  painters  and  sculptors,  who 
have  gained  the  most  cordial  appreciation  in 
Paris  itself,  or  in  drawing  attention  to  the  fact 
that  certain  of  the  minor  arts, — that  of  the  sil 
versmith,  for  one,  and  for  another,  that  of  the 
glass-blower  and  the  glass-cutter, — flourish  in 
the  United  States  at  least  as  freely  as  they  do 
anywhere  else,  while  the  art  of  designing  in 
stained  glass  has  had  a  new  birth  here,  which 
has  given  it  a  vigorous  vitality  lacking  in  Eu 
rope  since  the  Middle  Ages.  It  would  not  be 
hard  to  show  that  our  American  architects  are 
now  undertaking  to  solve  new  problems  wholly 
unknown  to  the  builders  of  Europe,  and  that 
36 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 


they  are  often  succeeding  in  this  grapple  with 
unprecedented  difficulty.  Nor  would  it  take 
long  to  draw  up  a  list  of  the  concerted  efforts 
of  certain  of  our  cities  to  make  themselves  more 
worthy  and  more  sightly  with  parks  well  planned 
and  with  public  buildings  well  proportioned  and 
appropriately  decorated.  We  might  even  in 
voke  the  memory  of  the  evanescent  loveliness  of 
the  White  City  that  graced  the  shores  of  Lake 
Michigan  a  few  years  ago;  and  we  might  draw 
attention  again  to  the  Library  of  Congress,  a 
later  effort  of  the  allied  arts  of  the  architect,  the 
sculptor  and  the  painter. 

But  however  full  of  high  hope  for  the  future 
we  may  esteem  these  several  instances  of  our 
reaching  out  for  beauty,  we  must  admit — if  we 
are  honest  with  ourselves — that  they  are  all 
more  or  less  exceptional,  and  that  to  offset  this 
list  of  artistic  achievements  the  Devil's  Advo 
cate  could  bring  forward  a  damning  catalog  of 
crimes  against  good  taste  which  would  go  far 
to  prove  that  the  feeling  for  beauty  is  dead  here 
in  America  and  also  the  desire  for  it.  The 
Devil's  Advocate  would  bid  us  consider  the 
flaring  and  often  vulgar  advertisements  that 
disfigure  our  highways,  the  barbaric  ineptness 
of  many  of  our  public  buildings,  the  squalor  of 
the  outskirts  of  our  towns  and  villages,  the  hid- 
eousness  and  horror  of  the  slums  in  most  of 
37 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

our  cities,  the  negligent  toleration  of  dirt  and 
disorder  in  our  public  conveyances,  and  many 
another  pitiable  deficiency  of  our  civilization 
present  in  the  minds  of  all  of  us. 

The  sole  retort  possible  is  a  plea  of  confession 
and  avoidance,  coupled  with  a  promise  of  re 
formation.  These  evils  are  evident  and  they 
cannot  be  denied.  But  they  are  less  evident  to 
day  than  they  were  yesterday;  and  we  may 
honestly  hope  that  they  will  be  less  evident  to 
morrow.  The  bare  fact  that  they  have  been  ob 
served  warrants  the  belief  that  unceasing  ef 
fort  will  be  made  to  do  away  with  them.  Once 
aroused,  public  opinion  will  work  its  will  in 
due  season.  And  here  occasion  serves  to  deny 
boldly  the  justice  of  a  part  of  the  accusation 
which  the  French  reporter  brought  against  us. 
It  may  be  true  that  we  "ignore  the  arts,"— al- 
tho  this  is  an  obvious  overstatement  of  the  case; 
but  it  is  not  true  that  we  "despise  beauty." 
However  ignorant  the  American  people  may 
be  as  a  whole,  they  are  in  no  sense  hostile  to 
ward  art — as  certain  other  peoples  seem  to  be. 
On  the  contrary,  they  welcome  it;  with  all  their 
ignorance,  they  are  anxious  to  understand  it; 
they  are  pathetically  eager  for  it.  They  are  so 
desirous  of  it  that  they  want  it  in  a  hurry,  only 
too  often  to  find  themselves  put  off  with  an 
empty  imitation.  But  the  desire  itself  is  indis- 

38 


AMERICAN   CHARACTER 

putable;  and  its  accomplishment  is  likely  to  be 
helpt  along  by  the  constant  commingling  here 
of  peoples  from  various  other  stocks  than  the 
Anglo-Saxon,  since  the  mixture  of  races  tends 
always  to  a  swifter  artistic  development. 

It  is  well  to  probe  deeper  into  the  question 
and  to  face  the  fact  that  not  only  in  the  arts  but 
also  in  the  sciences  we  are  not  doing  all  that 
may  fairly  be  expected  of  us.  Athens  was  a 
trading  city  as  New  York  is,  but  New  York 
has  had  no  Sophocles  and  no  Phidias.  Florence 
and  Venice  were  towns  whose  merchants  were 
princes,  but  no  American  city  has  yet  brought 
forth  a  Giotto,  a  Dante,  a  Titian.  It  is  now 
nearly  threescore  years  and  ten  since  Emerson 
delivered  his  address  on  the  'American  Scholar,' 
which  has  well  been  styled  our  intellectual 
Declaration  of  Independence,  and  in  which  he 
expressed  the  hope  that  "perhaps  the  time  is 
already  come  .  .  .  when  the  sluggard  intel 
lect  of  this  continent  will  look  from  under  its 
iron  lids  and  fulfil  the  postponed  expectation  of 
the  world  with  something  better  than  the  exer 
tions  of  a  mechanical  skill."  Nearly  seventy 
years  ago  was  this  prophecy  uttered  which  still 
echoes  unaccomplisht. 

In  the  nineteenth  century  in  which  we  came 
to  maturity  as  a  nation,  no  one  of  the  chief 
leaders  of  art,  even  including  literature  in  its 
39 


AMERICAN   CHARACTER 

broadest  aspects,  and  no  one  of  the  chief  leaders 
in  science,  was  native  to  our  country.  Perhaps 
we  might  claim  that  Webster  was  one  of  the 
world's  greatest  orators  and  that  Parkman  was 
one  of  the  world's  greatest  historians;  but  prob 
ably  the  experts  outside  of  the  United  States 
would  be  found  unprepared  and  unwilling  to 
admit  either  claim,  however  likely  it  may  be 
to  win  acceptance  in  the  future.  Lincoln  is  in 
disputably  one  of  the  world's  greatest  states 
men;  and  his  fame  is  now  firmly  establisht 
thruout  the  whole  of  civilization.  But  this 
is  all  we  can  assert;  and  we  cannot  deny  that 
we  have  given  birth  to  very  few  indeed  of  the 
foremost  poets,  dramatists,  novelists,  painters, 
sculptors,  architects  or  scientific  discoverers  of 
the  last  hundred  years. 

Alfred  Russell  Wallace,  whose  renown  is 
linkt  with  Darwin's  and  whose  competence 
as  a  critic  of  scientific  advance  is  beyond  dis 
pute,  has  declared  that  the  nineteenth  century 
was  the  most  wonderful  of  all  since  the  world 
began.  He  asserts  that  the  scientific  achieve 
ments  of  the  last  hundred  years,  both  in  the  dis 
covery  of  general  principles  and  in  their  prac 
tical  application,  exceed  in  number  the  sum 
total  of  the  scientific  achievements  to  be  credited 
to  all  the  centuries  that  went  before.  He  con 
siders,  first  of  all,  the  practical  applications, 
40 


AMERICAN   CHARACTER 

which  made  the  aspect  of  civilization  in  1900 
differ  in  a  thousand  ways  from  what  it  had  been 
in  1 80 1.  He  names  a  dozen  of  these  practi 
cal  applications:  railways,  steam  navigation,  the 
electric  telegraph,  the  telephone,  friction-matches, 
gas-lighting,  electric  lighting,  the  photograph, 
the  Roentgen  rays,  spectrum  analysis,  anes 
thetics,  and  antiseptics.  It  is  with  pride  that  an 
American  can  check  off  not  a  few  of  these  util 
ities  as  being  due  wholly  or  in  large  part  to  the 
ingenuity  of  one  or  another  of  his  countrymen. 
But  his  pride  has  a  fall  when  Wallace  draws 
up  a  second  list  not  of  mere  inventions  but  of 
those  fundamental  discoveries,  of  those  fecun 
dating  theories  underlying  all  practical  applica 
tions  and  making  them  possible,  of  those  prin 
ciples  "  which  have  extended  our  knowledge  or 
widened  our  conceptions  of  the  universe."  Of 
these  he  catalogs  twelve;  and  we  are  pained  to 
find  that  no  American  has  had  an  important 
share  in  the  establishment  of  any  of  these  broad 
generalizations.  He  may  have  added  a  little 
here  and  there;  but  no  single  one  of  all  the  twelve 
discoveries  is  mainly  to  be  credited  to  any  Amer 
ican.  It  seems  as  if  our  French  critic  was  not  so 
far  out  when  he  asserted  that  we  were  ''terri 
bly  practical."  In  the  application  of  principles, 
in  the  devising  of  new  methods,  our  share  was 
larger  than  that  of  any  other  nation.  In  the 


y 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

working  out  of  the  stimulating  principles  them 
selves,  our  share  was  less  than  "a  younger 
brother's  portion." 

It  is  only  fair  to  say,  however,  that  even  tho 
we  may  not  have  brought  forth  a  chief  leader  of 
art  or  of  science  to  adorn  the  wonderful  cen 
tury,  there  are  other  evidences  of  our  practical 
sagacity  than  those  set  down  by  Wallace,  evi 
dences  more  favorable  and  of  better  augury  for 
our  future.  We  derived  our  language  and  our 
laws,  our  public  justice  and  our  representative 
government  from  our  English  ancestors,  as  we 
derived  from  the  Dutch  our  religious  toleration 
and  perhaps  also  our  large  freedom  of  educa 
tional  opportunity.  In  our  time  we  have  set  an 
example  to  others  and  helpt  along  the  progress 
of  the  world.  President  Eliot  holds  that  we 
have  made  five  important  contributions  to  the 
advancement  of  civilization.  First  of  all,  we 
have  done  more  than  any  other  people  to  further 
peace-keeping,  and  to  substitute  legal  arbitra 
tion  for  the  brute  conflict  of  war,  Second,  we 
have  set  a  splendid  example  of  the  broadest  re 
ligious  toleration, — even  tho  Holland  had  first 
shown  us  how.  Thirdly,  we  have  made  evident 
the  wisdom  of  universal  manhood  suffrage. 
Fourthly,  by  our  welcoming  of  new-comers  from 
all  parts  of  the  earth,  we  have  proved  that  men 
belonging  to  a  great  variety  of  races  are  fit  for 
42 


AMERICAN   CHARACTER 

political  freedom.  Finally,  we  have  succeeded 
in  diffusing  material  well-being  among  the  whole 
population  to  an  extent  without  parallel  in  any 
other  country  in  the  world. 

These  five  American  contributions  to  civili 
zation  are  all  of  them  the  result  of  the  practi 
cal  side  of  the  American  character.  They  may 
even  seem  commonplace  as  compared  with  the 
conquering  exploits  of  some  other  races.  But 
they  are  more  than  merely  practical;  they  are 
all  essentially  moral.  As  President  Eliot  in 
sists,  they  are  "  triumphs  of  reason,  enterprize, 
courage,  faith  and  justice  over  passion,  self 
ishness,  inertness,  timidity,  and  distrust.  Be 
neath  each  of  these  developments  there  lies  a 
strong  ethical  sentiment,  a  strenuous  moral  and 
social  purpose.  It  is  for  such  work  that  multi 
tudinous  democracies  are  fit." 


IV 

A  "STRONG  ethical  sentiment,"  and  a  ''strenu 
ous  moral  purpose"  cannot  flourish  unless  they 
are  deeply  rooted  to  idealism.  And  here  we 
find  an  adequate  answer  to  the  third  assertion 
of  Tolstoi's  visitor,  who  maintained  that  we 
are  "hostile  to  all  idealism."  Our  idealism  may 
be  of  a  practical  sort,  but  it  is  idealism  none 
the  less.  Emerson  was  an  idealist,  altho  he 
43 


AMERICAN   CHARACTER 

was  also  a  thrifty  Yankee.  Lincoln  was  an 
idealist,  even  if  he  was  also  a  practical  poli 
tician,  an  opportunist,  knowing  where  he  wanted 
to  go,  but  never  crossing  a  bridge  before  he 
came  to  it.  Emerson  and  Lincoln  had  ever  a 
firm  grip  on  the  facts  of  life;  each  of  them  kept 
his  gaze  fixt  on  the  stars, — and  he  also  kept 
his  feet  firm  on  the  soil. 

There  is  a  sham  idealism,  boastful  and  shabby, 
which  stares  at  the  moon  and  stumbles  in  the 
mud,  as  Shelley  and  Poe  stumbled.  But  the  basis 
of  the  highest  genius  is  always  a  broad  com 
mon  sense.  Shakspere  and  Moliere  were  held 
in  esteem  by  their  comrades  for  their  under 
standing  of  affairs;  and  they  each  of  them  had 
money  out  at  interest.  Sophocles  was  entrusted 
with  command  in  battle;  and  Goethe  was  the 
shrewdest  of  the  Grand  Duke's  counselors. 
The  idealism  of  Shakspere  and  of  Moliere,  of 
Sophocles  and  of  Goethe,  is  like  that  of  Emer 
son  and  of  Lincoln;  it  is  unfailingly  practical. 
And  thereby  it  is  sharply  set  apart  from  the 
aristocratic  idealism  of  Plato  and  of  Renan, 
of  Ruskin  and  of  Nietzsche,  which  is  founded 
on  obvious  self-esteem  and  which  is  sustained 
by  arrogant  and  inexhaustible  egotism.  True 
idealism  is  not  only  practical,  it  is  also  liberal 
and  tolerant. 

Perhaps  it  might  seem  to  be  claiming  too 
44 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

much  to  insist  on  certain  points  of  similarity 
between  us  and  the  Greeks  of  old.  The  points 
of  dissimilarity  are  only  too  evident  to  most  of 
us;  and  yet  there  is  a  likeness  as  well  as  an 
unlikeness.  Professor  Butcher  has  recently  as 
serted  that  "no  people  was  ever  less  detacht 
from  the  practical  affairs  of  life"  than  the  Greeks, 
"less  insensible  to  outward  utility;  yet  they  re 
garded  prosperity  as  a  means,  never  as  an  end. 
The  unquiet  spirit  of  gain  did  not  take  posses 
sion  of  their  souls.  Shrewd  traders  and  mer 
chants,  they  were  yet  idealists.  They  did  not 
lose  sight  of  the  higher  and  distinctively  human 
aims  which  give  life  its  significance."  It  will 
be  well  for  us  if  this  can  be  said  of  our  civiliza 
tion  two  thousand  years  after  its  day  is  done; 
and  it  is  for  us  to  make  sure  that  "the  unquiet 
spirit  of  gain"  shall  not  take  possession  of  our 
souls.  It  is  for  us  also  to  rise  to  the  attitude 
of  the  Greeks,  among  whom,  as  Professor  Butcher 
points  out,  "money  lavisht  on  personal  enjoy 
ment  was  counted  vulgar,  oriental,  inhuman." 

There  is  comfort  in  the  memory  of  Lincoln  and 
of  those  whose  death  on  the  field  of  Gettys 
burg  he  commemorated.  The  men  who  there 
gave  up  their  lives  that  the  country  might  live, 
had  answered  to  the  call  of  patriotism,  which 
is  one  of  the  sublimest  images  of  idealism.  There 
is  comfort  also  in  the  recollection  of  Emerson, 
45 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

and  in  the  fact  that  for  many  of  the  middle  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century  he  was  the  most  popu 
lar  of  lecturers,  with  an  unfading  attractiveness 
to  the  plain  people,  perhaps,  because,  in  Lowell's 
fine  phrase,  he  "kept  constantly  burning  the 
beacon  of  an  ideal  life  above  the  lower  region  of 
turmoil."  There  is  comfort  again  in  the  knowl 
edge  that  idealism  is  one  manifestation  of  imag 
ination,  and  that  imagination  itself  is  but  an  in- 
tenser  form  of  energy.  That  we  have  energy 
and  to  spare,  no  one  denies;  and  we  may  reckon 
him  a  nearsighted  observer  who  does  not  see 
also  that  we  have  our  full  share  of  imagination, 
even  tho  it  has  not  yet  exprest  itself  in  the 
loftiest  regions  of  art  and  of  science.  The  out 
look  is  hopeful,  and  it  is  not  true  that 

We,  like  sentries  are  obliged  to  stand 

In  starless  nights  and  wait  the  appointed  hour. 

The  foundations  of  our  commonwealth  were 
laid  by  the  sturdy  Elizabethans  who  bore  across 
the  ocean  with  them  their  portion  of  that  imag 
ination  which  in  England  flamed  up  in  rugged 
prose  and  in  superb  and  soaring  verse.  In  two 
centuries  and  a  half  the  sons  of  these  stalwart 
Englishmen  have  lost  nothing  of  their  ability 
to  see  visions  and  to  dream  dreams,  and  to  put 
solid  foundations  under  their  castles  in  the  air. 
The  flame  may  seem  to  die  down  for  a  season, 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

but  it  springs  again  from  the  embers  most  un 
expectedly,  as  it  broke  forth  furiously  in  1861. 
There  was  imagination  at  the  core  of  the  little 
war  for  the  freeing  of  Cuba, — the  very  attack 
on  Spain,  which  the  Parisian  journalist  cited  to 
Tolstoi  as  the  proof  of  our  predatory  aggressive 
ness.  We  said  that  we  were  going  to  war  for 
the  sake  of  the  ill-used  people  in  the  suffering 
island  close  to  our  shores;  we  said  that  we 
would  not  annex  Cuba;  we  did  the  fighting  that 
was  needful; — and  we  kept  our  word.  It  is 
hard  to  see  how  even  the  most  bitter  of  critics 
can  discover  in  this  anything  selfish. 

There  was  imagination  also  in  the  sudden 
stopping  of  all  the  steamcraft,  of  all  the  rail 
roads,  of  all  the  street-cars,  of  all  the  incessant 
traffic  of  the  whole  nation,  at  the  moment  when 
the  body  of  a  murdered  chief  magistrate  was 
lowered  into  the  grave.  This  pause  in  the  work 
of  the  world  was  not  only  touching,  it  had  a 
large  significance  to  any  one  seeking  to  under 
stand  the  people  of  these  United  States.  It  was 
a  testimony  that  the  Greeks  would  have  appre 
ciated;  it  had  the  bold  simplicity  of  an  Attic 
inscription.  And  we  would  thrill  again  in  sym 
pathetic  response  if  it  was  in  the  pages  of  Plu 
tarch  that  we  read  the  record  of  another  in 
stance:  When  the  time  arrived  for  Admiral 
Sampson  to  surrender  the  command  of  the 
47 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

fleet  he  had  brought  back  to  Hampton  Roads, 
he  came  on  deck  to  meet  there  only  those  of 
ficers  whose  prescribed  duty  required  them  to 
take  part  in  the  farewell  ceremonies  as  set  forth 
in  the  regulations.  But  when  he  went  over 
the  side  of  the  flagship  he  found  that  the  boat 
which  was  to  bear  him  ashore  was  manned  by 
the  rest  of  the  officers,  ready  to  row  him  them 
selves  and  eager  to  render  this  last  personal 
service;  and  then  from  every  other  ship  of  the 
fleet  there  put  out  a  boat  also  manned  by  of 
ficers,  to  escort  for  the  last  time  the  commander 
whom  they  loved  and  honored. 


As  another  illustration  of  our  regard  for  the 
finer  and  loftier  aspects  of  life,  consider  our 
parks,  set  apart  for  the  use  of  the  people  by 
the  city,  the  state  and  the  nation.  In  the  cities 
of  this  new  country  the  public  playgrounds  have 
had  to  be  made,  the  most  of  them,  and  at  high 
cost, — whereas  the  towns  of  the  Old  World  have 
come  into  possession  of  theirs  for  nothing,  more 
often  than  not  inheriting  the  private  recreation- 
grounds  of  their  rulers.  And  Europe  has  little 
or  nothing  to  show  similar  either  to  the  reserva 
tions  of  certain  states,  like  the  steadily  enlarging 
preserves  in  the  Catskills  and  the  Adirondacks, 
48 


AMERICAN   CHARACTER 


or  to  the  ampler  national  parks,  the  Yellowstone, 
the  Yosemite  and  the  Grand  Canyon  of  the  Colo 
rado,  some  of  them  far  larger  in  area  than  one 
at  least  of  the  original  thirteen  states.     Over 
coming  the  pressure  of  private  greed,  the  people 
have  ordained  the  preservation  of  this  natural 
beauty  and  its  protection  for  all  time  under  the 
safe  guardianship  of  the  nation  and  with  free  ac 
cess  to  all  who  may  claim  admission  to  enjoy  it. 
In  like  manner  many  of  the  battlefields,  where 
on  the  nation  spent  its  blood  that  it  might  be 
what  it  is  and  what  it  hopes  to  be, — these  have 
been  taken  over  by  the  nation  itself  and  set  apart 
and  kept  as  holy  places  of  pilgrimage.     They  are 
free  from  the  despoiling  hand  of  any  individual 
owner.     They  are  adorned  with  monuments  re 
cording  the  brave  deeds  of  the  men  who  fought 
there.     They  serve  as  constant  reminders  of  the 
duty  we  owe  to  our  country  and   of  the  debt 
we  owe  to  those  who  made  it  and  who  saved  it 
for  us.     And   the  loyal  veneration  with  which 
these  fields  of  blood  have  been  cherisht  here  in 
the  United  States  finds  no  counterpart  in  any 
country  in  Europe,  no  matter  how  glorious  may 
be  its  annals  of  military  prowess.     Even  Waterloo 
is  in  private  hands;   and  its  broad  acres,  enricht 
by  the  bones  of  thousands,  are  tilled  every  year 
by  the  industrious  Belgian  farmers.     Yet  it  was 
a  Frenchman,   Renan,   who  told   us  that  what 
49 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

welds  men  into  a  nation,  is  "the  memory  of 
great  deeds  done  in  common  and  the  will  to  ac 
complish  yet  more." 

According  to  the  theory  of  the  conservation  of 
energy,  there  ought  to  be  about  as  much  virtue 
in  the  world  at  one  time  as  at  another.  Accord 
ing  to  the  theory  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest, 
there  ought  to  be  a  little  more  now  than  there 
was  a  century  ago.  We  Americans  to-day  have 
our  faults,  and  they  are  abundant  enough  and 
blatant  enough,  and  foreigners  take  care  that 
we  shall  not  overlook  them;  but  our  ethical 
standard — however  imperfectly  we  may  attain 
to  it — is  higher  than  that  of  the  Greeks  under 
Pericles,  of  the  Romans  under  Caesar,  of  the 
English  under  Elizabeth.  It  is  higher  even 
than  that  of  our  forefathers  who  establisht 
our  freedom,  as  those  know  best  who  have 
most  carefully  inquired  into  the  inner  history 
of  the  American  Revolution.  In  nothing  was 
our  advance  more  striking  than  in  the  different 
treatment  meted  out  to  the  vanquisht  after  the 
Revolution  and  after  the  Civil  War.  When 
we  made  our  peace  with  the  British  the  native 
tories  were  proscribed,  and  thousands  of  loyal 
ists  left  the  United  States  to  carry  into  Canada 
the  indurated  hatred  of  the  exiled.  But  after 
Lee's  surrender  at  Appomattox,  no  body  of 
men,  no  single  man  indeed,  was  driven  forth 
50 


AMERICAN   CHARACTER 

to  live  an  alien  for  the  rest  of  his  days;  even  tho 
a  few  might  choose  to  go,  none  were  compelled. 
This  change  of  conduct  on  the  part  of  those 
who  were  victors  in  the  struggle  was  evidence 
of  an  increasing  sympathy.  Not  only  is  section 
alism  disappearing,  but  with  it  is  departing  the 
feeling  that  really  underlies  it,— the  distrust  of 
those  who  dwell  elsewhere  than  where  we  do. 
This  distrust  is  common  all  over  Europe  to 
day.  Here  in  America  it  has  yielded  to  a  friendly 
neighborliness  which  makes  the  family  from 
Portland,  Maine,  soon  find  itself  at  home  in 
Portland,  Oregon.  It  is  getting  hard  for  us  to 
hate  anybody, — especially  since  we  have  dis- 
establisht  the  devil.  We  are  good-natured  and 
easy-going;  Herbert  Spencer  even  denounced 
this  as  our  immediate  danger,  maintaining  that 
we  were  too  good-natured,  too  easy-going,  too 
tolerant  of  evil;  and  he  insisted  that  we  needed 
to  strengthen  our  wills  to  protest  against  wrong, 
to  wrestle  with  it  resolutely,  and  to  overcome 
it  before  it  is  firmly  rooted. 

VI 

WE  are  kindly  and  we  are  helpful;  and  we  are 

fixt  in  the  belief  that  somehow  everything  will 

work  out  all  right  in  the  long  run.     But  nothing 

will  work  out  all   right  unless  we  so  make  it 

51 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

work;  and  excessive  optimism  may  be  as  cor 
rupting  to  the  fiber  of  the  people  as  "the  Sab 
bathless  pursuit  of  fortune,"  as  Bacon  termed 
it.  When  Mr.  John  Morley  was  last  in  this 
country  he  seized  swiftly  upon  a  chance  allu 
sion  of  mine  to  this  ingrained  hopefulness  of 
ours.  "Ah,  what  you  call  optimism,"  he  cried, 
"I  call  fatalism."  But  an  optimism  which  is  sol 
idly  based  on  a  survey  of  the  facts  cannot  fairly 
be  termed  fatalism;  and  another  British  stu 
dent  of  political  science,  Mr.  James  Bryce,  has 
recently  pointed  out  that  the  intelligent  native 
American  has — and  by  experience  is  justified 
in  having — a  firm  conviction  that  the  majority 
of  qualified  voters  are  pretty  sure  to  be  right. 

Then  he  suggested  a  reason  for  the  faith  that 
is  in  us,  when  he  declared  that  no  such  feeling 
exists  in  Europe,  since  in  Germany  the  gov 
erning  class  dreads  the  spread  of  socialism,  in 
France  the  republicans  know  that  it  is  not  im 
possible  that  Monarchism  and  Clericalism  may 
succeed  in  upsetting  the  Republic,  while  in 
Great  Britain  each  party  believes  that  the  other 
party,  when  it  succeeds,  succeeds  by  mislead 
ing  the  people,  and  neither  party  supposes  that 
the  majority  are  any  more  likely  to  be  right  than 
to  be  wrong. 

Mr.  Morley  and  Mr.  Bryce  were  both  here  in 
the  United  States  in  the  fall  of  1904,  when  we 
52 


AMERICAN   CHARACTER 

were  in  the  midst  of  a  presidential  election,  one 
of  those  prolonged  national  debates,  creating 
incessant  commotion,  but  invaluable  agents  of 
our  political  education,  in  so  far  as  they  force 
us  all  to  take  thought  about  the  underlying  prin 
ciples  of  policy,  by  which  we  wish  to  see  the  govern 
ment  guided.  It  was  while  this  political  cam 
paign  was  at  its  height  that  the  French  visitor 
to  the  Russian  novelist  was  setting  his  notes  in 
order  and  copying  out  his  assertion  that  we  Ameri 
cans  were  mere  money-grubbers,  "systematically 
hostile  to  all  idealism."  If  this  unthinking 
Parisian  journalist  had  only  taken  the  trouble 
to  consider  the  addresses  which  the  chief  speak 
ers  of  the  two  parties  here  in  the  United  States 
were  then  making  to  their  fellow-citizens  in  the 
hope  of  winning  votes,  he  would  have  discovered 
that  these  practical  politicians,  trained  to  per 
ceive  the  subtler  shades  of  popular  feeling,  were 
founding  all  their  arguments  on  the  assumption 
that  the  American  people  as  a  whole  wanted  to 
do  right.  He  would  have  seen  that  the  appeal 
of  these  stalwart  partisans  was  rarely  to  prejudice 
or  to  race-hatred, — evil  spirits  that  various  ora 
tors  have  sought  to  arouse  and  to  intensify  in 
the  more  recent  political  discussions  of  the  French 
themselves. 

An  examination  of  the  platforms,  of  the  let 
ters  of  the  candidates,  and  of  the  speeches  of  the 
53 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

more  important  leaders  on  both  sides  revealed 
to  an  American  observer  the  significant  fact 
that  "each  party  tried  to  demonstrate  that  it 
was  more  peaceable,  more  equitable,  more  sin 
cerely  devoted  to  lawful  and  righteous  behavior 
than  the  other;"  and  "the  voter  was  instinc 
tively  credited  with  loving  peace  and  righteousness, 
and  with  being  stirred  by  sentiments  of  good-will 
toward  men."  This  seems  to  show  that  the  heart 
of  the  people  is  sound,  and  that  it  does  not  throb 
in  response  to  ignoble  appeals.  It  seems  to  show 
that  there  is  here  the  desire  ever  to  do  right  and 
to  see  right  done,  even  if  the  will  is  weakened  a 
little  by  easy-going  good-nature,  and  even  if  the 
will  fails  at  times  to  stiffen  itself  resolutely  to 
make  sure  that  the  right  shall  prevail. 

"Liberty  hath  a  sharp  and  double  edge  fit 
only  to  be  handled  by  just  and  virtuous  men," 
so  Milton  asserted  long  ago,  adding  that  "to 
the  bad  and  dissolute,  it  becomes  a  mischief 
unwieldy  in  their  own  hands."  Even  if  we 
Americans  can  clear  ourselves  of  being  "bad 
and  dissolute,"  we  have  much  to  do  before  we 
may  claim  to  be  "just  and  virtuous."  Justice 
and  virtue  are  not  to  be  had  for  the  asking; 
they  are  the  rewards  of  a  manful  contest  with 
selfishness  and  with  sloth.  They  are  the  re 
sults  of  an  honest  effort  to  think  straight,  and 
to  apply  eternal  principles  to  present  needs. 
54 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER 

Merely  to  feel  is  only  the  beginning;  what  re 
mains  is  to  think  and  to  act. 

A  British  historian,  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison, 
who  came  here  to  spy  out  the  land  three  or 
four  years  before  Mr.  Morley  and  Mr.  Bryce 
last  visited  us,  was  struck  by  the  fact  —  and 
by  the  many  consequences  of  the  fact — that 
"  America  is  the  only  land  on  earth  where  caste 
has  never  had  a  footing,  nor  has  left  a  trace." 
It  seemed  to  him  that  "vast  numbers  and  the 
passion  of  equality  tend  to  low  averages  in 
thought,  in  manners,  and  in  public  opinion, 
which  the  zeal  of  the  devoted  minority  tends 
gradually  to  raise  to  higher  planes  of  thought 
and  conduct."  He  believed  that  we  should  solve 
our  problems  one  by  one  because  "the  zeal  for 
learning,  justice  and  humanity"  lies  deep  in 
the  American  heart.  Mr.  Harrison  did  not  say 
it  in  so  many  words,  but  it  is  implied  in  what 
he  did  say,  that  the  absence  of  caste  and  the 
presence  of  low  averages  in  thought,  in  man 
ners,  and  in  public  opinion,  impose  a  heavier 
task  on  the  devoted  minority,  whose  duty  it  is 
to  keep  alive  the  zeal  for  learning,  justice  and 
humanity. 

Which  of  us,  if  haply  the  spirit  moves  him, 

may  not  elect  himself  to  this  devoted  minority? 

Why  should  not  we  also,  each  in  our  own  way, 

without  pretence,  without  boastfulness,  without 

55 


AMERICAN   CHARACTER 

bullying,  do  whatsoever  in  us  lies  for  the  at 
tainment  of  justice  and  of  virtue?  It  is  well  to 
be  a  gentleman  and  a  scholar;  but  after  all  it  is 
best  to  be  a  man,  ready  to  do  a  man's  work  in 
the  world.  And  indeed  there  is  no  reason  why 
a  gentleman  and  a  scholar  should  not  also  be 
a  man.  He  will  need  to  cherish  what  Huxley 
called  "that  enthusiasm  for  truth,  that  fanaticism 
for  veracity,  which  is  a  greater  possession  than 
much  learning,  a  nobler  gift  than  the  power  of 
increasing  knowledge."  He  will  need  also  to 
remember  that 


Kings  have  their  dynasties, — but  not  the  mind; 
Caesar  leaves  other  Cassars  to  succeed, 
But  Wisdom,  dying,  leaves  no  heir  behind. 


(1905-) 


THE  AMERICANS  AND  THE 
BRITISH 


THE  AMERICANS  AND  THE  BRITISH 

MANY  of  those  who  take  an  interest  in  ob 
serving  social  complexities  must  have 
noticed  a  curious  divergence  in  the  opinions  held 
by  the  French  and  by  the  British  about  the  people 
of  the  United  States.  Reasoning  from  certain 
of  the  obvious  facts  the  French  come  to  one  con 
clusion,  and  reasoning  from  other  facts  equally 
obvious  the  British  have  arrived  at  an  opinion 
almost  diametrically  opposite.  The  French,  re 
calling  the  Spanish  settlements  in  the  South  and 
their  own  exploration  of  the  Mississippi  Valley 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  observing  the  im 
mense  immigration  from  Germany  and  from 
Scandinavia  in  the  nineteenth,  are  inclined  to 
think  of  the  United  States  as  populated  by  a 
chance  conglomeration  of  unrelated  human  be 
ings  with  no  unity  of  tradition  and  with  no  com 
mon  core  of  ideals.  The  British,  on  the  other 
hand,  knowing  that  the  beginnings  of  the  United 
States  are  to  be  found  partly  in  New  England 
and  partly  in  Virginia,  and  seeing  that  we  speak 
the  English  language  and  have  transplanted  the 
common  law  of  England,  are  unable  to  conceive 
of  us  as  anything  but  English. 

59 


THE   AMERICANS   AND   THE   BRITISH 

The  theory  of  the  French  seems  to  be  shared 
by  most  of  the  other  Latin  nations,  as  we  had 
occasion  to  discover  at  the  outbreak  of  our  little 
war  with  Spain.  Apparently  the  Latins,  all  of 
them,  Italians  as  well  as  French  and  Spanish, 
looked  upon  the  inhabitants  of  the  United  States 
as  a  motley  horde  of  mongrels  with  no  pride  of 
nationality  and  with  no  cohesive  interests;  and 
they  held  therefore  that  we  were  likely  to  be  de 
feated  easily  by  the  pureblooded  population  of 
the  Iberian  peninsula.  Of  course,  the  edu 
cated  man  of  the  Latin  races  would  have  had  to 
admit — if  the  question  had  been  forced  on  his 
attention— that  the  Spanish  were  not  really  a 
pureblooded  stock;  and  if  he  was  pusht  to  the 
wall  the  further  confession  might  have  been  wrung 
from  him  that  there  are  now  no  nationalities 
having  a  right  to  pride  themselves  on  purity  of 
descent, — the  Spanish,  perhaps,  the  least  of  all, 
since  their  land  had  been  held  in  turn  by  the 
Celts  and  by  the  Romans,  by  the  Goths  and 
Vandals,  and  even  by  the  Arab  invaders  from 
Africa.  What  is  more,  the  educated  man  of  the 
Latin  countries  is  well  aware  that  inbreeding  is 
debilitating  to  a  nation  and  that  there  is  rein- 
vigoration  and  new  life  in  the  commingling  of 
varied  human  stocks. 

The  theory  held  by  the  British  is  exactly  the 
opposite  of  that  held  by  the  French.  It  is  exem- 
60 


THE   AMERICANS   AND  THE   BRITISH 

plified  in  the  essay  written  about  us  by  Matthew 
Arnold  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  before  he  paid 
his  first  visit  to  this  country.  His  assumption 
was  that  the  Americans  were  at  bottom  expatri 
ated  Englishmen,  modified  only  a  little  by  the 
passage  across  the  Atlantic.  The  scholarly  Brit 
ish  critic  had  often  declared  that  the  inhabitants 
of  Great  Britain  could  be  sharply  distinguisht 
into  an  upper  class,  a  middle  class,  and  a  lower 
class;  and  he  seems  to  have  assumed  that  as  we 
had  no  upper  class  and  no  lower  class,  the  Ameri 
can  people  were  therefore  the  counterparts  of 
the  British  middle  class,  no  more  and  no  less. 
The  extent  of  Matthew  Arnold's  blunder  in  re 
gard  to  us,  as  a  result  of  his  initial  assumption 
of  this  identity  between  the  British  and  the  Ameri 
cans,  can  be  gaged  best  by  recalling  his  own 
characterization  of  the  several  classes  in  Eng 
land, — "an  aristocracy  materialized  and  null, 
a  middle  class  purblind  and  hideous,  a  lower 
class  crude  and  brutal."  In  his  later  writings 
there  is  some  evidence  that  he  began  to  suspect 
that  his  assumption  was  not  as  indisputable  as 
he  had  supposed.  But  it  is  a  fallacy  which  lurks 
in  the  opinions  of  nearly  all  British  critics  who 
have  occasion  to  talk  about  us  and  which  often 
endures  even  after  they  have  paid  us  the  oblig 
atory  visit.  As  Mr.  Howells  has  suggested  with 
his  customary  acuteness,  the  British  fail  to  under- 
61 


THE   AMERICANS   AND  THE   BRITISH 

stand  us  chiefly  "because  they  can  never  under 
stand  that  we  are  not  still  a  sort  of  Englishmen- 
in-error,  who  would  be  willingly  set  right  if  we 
could  without  too  great  publicity." 

Perhaps  it  is  because  the  British  have  ever  ac 
cepted  us  as  closely  akin  to  themselves  that  they 
have  been  free  with  the  searching  reproofs  which 
are  not  uncommon  in  the  strict  privacy  of  the 
family  circle.  Even  when  their  intentions  are 
most  kindly,  they  permit  us  to  perceive  that  they 
suppose  us  to  be  sorry  for  our  separation.  Even 
when  they  are  broad-minded  enough  to  see  that 
we  were  right  in  1776  and  that  their  own  rulers 
were  wrong,  even  when  they  are  acute  enough 
to  feel  that  we  were  then  really  fighting  the  bat 
tles  of  liberalism  and  making  possible  more  swiftly 
the  full  freedom  they  themselves  now  enjoy, 
even  when  they  have  attained  to  this  wisdom, 
they  are  inclined  nevertheless  to  deplore  the  sep 
aration  itself.  It  is  very  hard  indeed  for  them 
to  understand  that  the  independence  of  the  United 
States  seems  to  us  the  beginning  of  a  new  era, 
and  that  we  simply  cannot  conceive  of  ourselves 
as  still  subjects  of  a  king,  even  if  we  know  that 
a  constitutional  monarchy  such  as  exists  in  Great 
Britain  conserves  to  the  individual  perhaps  as 
much  of  the  essence  of  liberty  as  our  own  demo 
cratic  republic. 

They  would  be  surprized  to  discover  that  some 
62 


THE  AMERICANS   AND  THE   BRITISH 

of  us,  revering  Washington  as  the  Father  of  His 
Country,  are  ready  also  with  a  grateful  regard 
for  George  III,  as  a  sort  of  Stepfather  of  the 
United  States, — since  we  might  not  have  been 
stirred  to  independence  if  that  able  monarch 
had  not  been  as  arbitrary  as  he  was  and  as  ob 
stinate.  They  are  therefore  capable,  in  all  kind 
ness,  of  suggesting  a  reunion  of  the  United  States 
with  the  United  Kingdom,  such  as  Lord  Rose- 
bery  proposed  as  a  consummation  to  be  striven 
for  in  the  future.  And  here  at  once  we  catch  a 
glimpse  of  the  gulf  that  yawns  between  a  Brit 
ish  subject  and  an  American  citizen.  It  was  with 
the  utmost  good  will  toward  America  that  the 
former  British  prime-minister  was  moved  to 
make  this  suggestion,  never  suspecting  that  to 
an  American  what  he  proposed  was  simply  un 
thinkable.  However  cordial  toward  the  Brit 
ish  the  feelings  of  an  American  may  be,  he  never 
regrets  the  Revolution,  and  he  never  wishes  to 
undo  its  results.  Not  only  does  he  never  desire 
to  turn  back  the  clock  of  Time,  but  the  possi 
bility  of  such  a  step  is  not  present  in  his  mind. 
He  would  reject  it  instantly  if  it  happened  to  oc 
cur  to  him; — but  then  this  never  does  happen. 
He  would  refuse  to  take  the  proposal  seriously, 
if  any  well-meaning  Englishman  should  insist 
on  discussing  it.  He  feels  instinctively  that  there 
was  no  price  too  high  to  pay  for  certain  of  the 

63 


THE  AMERICANS   AND  THE  BRITISH 

results  of  the  American  Revolution.  He  would 
accept  as  a  matter  of  course  the  statement  made 
by  Mr.  Howells  after  Lord  Rosebery  had  lookt 
forward  to  a  possible  political  reunion  of  the  two 
nations  that  speak  English: — "Simply  to  have 
thrown  down  and  cast  out  their  fetish  of  personal 
loyalty,  denied  their  grotesque  idolatry  of  sover 
eign-worship,  not  to  mention  getting  rid  of  a  titled 
aristocracy  and  a  state-church,  is  worth  all  that 
our  seven  years'  struggle  for  independence  cost 
us." 

Here  indeed  is  the  real  line  of  cleavage  between 
the  two  great  empires  that  possess  the  English 
language  as  a  birthright.  The  presence  of  a 
personal  sovereign  is  the  outward  and  visible 
sign  that  caste  is  still  supreme  in  the  British 
Empire.  The  external  abuses  of  the  feudal 
system  have  been  abolished  in  Great  Britain, 
one  by  one,  until  those  that  still  linger  are  almost 
harmless;  but  the  inner  spirit  survives  to  this  late 
day  and  even  now  its  manifestations  are  abun 
dant  in  almost  every  part  of  the  social  structure 
of  the  British  Isles.  There  is  still  alive  the  fic 
tion  that  the  king  rules,  and  that  the  army  of 
the  empire  is  His  Majesty's  army.  There  is 
still  a  willing  acceptance  of  a  titled  aristocracy, 
and  also  of  an  upper  house  the  vast  majority  of 
whose  members  sit  there  by  the  right  of  birth 
merely,  without  regard  to  their  individual  merits. 
64 


THE  AMERICANS  AND  THE  BRITISH 

No  doubt  the  British  people  could  change  these 
things,  speedily  and  without  violence,  if  they 
really  desired  to  get  rid  of  this  inheritance  from 
feudalism.  But  they  have  not  got  rid  of  it;  and 
this  is  evidence  enough  that  they  do  not  wish  to 
do  so.  The  British  see  no  reason  to  abolish  a 
state  of  affairs  which  the  American  people  look 
at  with  amazed  wonder  as  a  survival  of  the 
Dark  Ages.  A  native  American  finds  it  wholly 
impossible  to  understand  the  mental  attitude  of 
a  certain  man  of  letters  in  London,  who  justified 
his  ingrained  Toryism  by  the  assertion  that  he 
simply  would  not  be  ruled  by  his  equals. 

We  Americans  care  less  for  the  opinion  of 
foreigners  about  us  than  we  did  before  the  Civil 
War  revealed  to  us  our  own  strength.  We  know 
that  the  French  view,  that  we  are  only  a  motley 
horde  of  the  sweepings  of  Europe,  is  absurd. 
We  see  also  that  the  British  assumption  in  regard 
to  us,  that  we  are  only  "  Englishmen-in-error," 
when  once  we  have  come  to  understand  it,  is 
equally  absurd.  And  yet  the  British  are  our  "kin 
across  the  sea,"  and  "blood  is  thicker  than  water," 
and  we  are  also  "the  subjects  of  King  Shakspere," 
and  we  have  the  same  language  for  our  mother- 
tongue.  In  politics,  in  public  morals  and  in 
private  morals,  in  our  attitude  toward  the  most 
of  the  pressing  questions  of  the  day,  we  are  far 
more  closely  related  to  the  British  than  we  are 
65 


THE  AMERICANS   AND  THE  BRITISH 

either  to  the  French  or  to  the  Germans,  how 
ever  much  we  may  have  profited  by  the  labors 
of  the  leading  minds  of  France  and  of  Germany. 
Yet  we  have  cast  out  the  last  vestiges  of  the  feudal 
system  of  which  the  British  are  still  preserving 
at  least  the  empty  shell;  and  we  have  absorbed 
not  only  millions  of  men  from  continental  Eu 
rope  but  also  many  of  the  ideas  of  continental 
Europe  which  have  not  appealed  to  the  British. 
In  most  matters  of  the  highest  importance  we 
are  very  like  the  British;  but  in  some  matters 
of  high  importance  we  are  very  unlike  them. 

Perhaps  we  may  be  aided  in  the  attempt  to 
distinguish  between  the  British  and  the  Ameri 
cans  if  we  begin  by  an  attempt  to  set  forth  the 
more  salient  differences  between  the  French 
people  and  the  two  peoples  that  speak  English. 
The  most  obvious  distinction  is  that  the  people 
which  speaks  French,  having  inherited  from  the 
Celts  a  hatred  of  hypocrisy,  are  inclined  to  boast 
of  their  vices,  whereas  the  peoples  which  speak 
English  are  wont  to  boast  of  their  virtues,— and 
often  with  as  little  warrant.  Then,  furthermore, 
the  French  are  a  logical  race,  intelligent,  orderly 
in  their  mental  processes,  clear-minded  and  thoro- 
going;  they  are  inclined  to  be  radicals  in  the 
application  of  any  theory  which  has  captivated 
their  intellect.  The  British  and  the  Americans 
are  less  intelligent,  and  less  logical;  they  are 
66 


THE  AMERICANS   AND  THE  BRITISH 

rarely  radical  or  merely  theoretical;  they  are 
prone  to  be  practical,  to  be  opportunists.  The 
language  which  the  French  speak,  which  they 
have  made  what  it  is  and  which  represents  and 
reveals  their  characteristics,  is  clear,  sharp,  pre 
cise,  exact;  and  as  a  result  it  is  unpoetic  and  hos 
tile  to  all  vague  suggestion  or  mysticism.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  English  language  is  large, 
loose,  free,  energetic,  vigorous,  like  the  two 
peoples  whose  mother-tongue  it  is.  French  is 
seen  at  its  best  in  prose,  whereas  English  is  su 
preme  in  poetry.  English  tragedy  is,  on  the  whole, 
far  superior  to  English  comedy,  whereas  French 
comedy  is,  on  the  whole,  far  superior  to  French 
tragedy.  There  is  obvious  significance  in  the 
fact  that  the  greatest  name  in  the  history  of 
French  dramatic  literature  is  that  of  Moliere, 
the  melancholy  man  who  is  the  master  of  comedy, 
while  the  greatest  name  in  the  history  of  Eng 
lish  dramatic  literature  is  that  of  Shakspere,  a 
humorist  also  it  is  true,  but  above  all  others  the 
master  of  tragedy. 

Moreover,  the  chief  characteristic  of  the  two 
peoples  that  speak  English  is  individuality, 
whereas  the  French  are  governed  by  the  social 
instinct.  The  individual  Frenchman  is  likely 
to  lack  initiative  ;  he  does  not  expect  to  think  for 
himself  or  to  act  for  himself;  he  looks  to  tradi 
tion  and  to  the  social  organism  to  tell  him  what 
67 


THE  AMERICANS  AND  THE  BRITISH 

to  do.  The  individual  Anglo-Saxon  has  a  super 
abundance  of  initiative;  he  is  like  the  smith  in 
Scott's  story,  he  "fights  for  his  own  hand."  In 
French  society  the  unit  is  the  family;  and  in 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  it  is  the  in 
dividual.  An  Englishman  or  an  American  mar 
ries  to  please  himself;  but  a  Frenchman,  even  if 
he  strives  to  please  himself  in  his  marriage,  seeks 
also  not  to  displease  his  parents  and  his  relatives. 
In  England  and  in  America  a  wedding  unites 
two  individuals;  in  France  it  unites  two  families. 
Among  the  peoples  that  speak  English  it  is  al 
most  impossible  to  conceive  of  a  strong  man  acting 
on  the  motive  which  governed  the  Duke  of  Saint 
Simon  in  the  days  of  Louis  XIV  when  he  declined 
to  wed  an  orphan,  because  he  did  not  wish  to  be 
without  the  social  support  of  a  father-in-law. 

While  the  social  instinct  which  governs  the 
French  insistently  is  far  less  potent  among  the 
English-speaking  peoples,  its  workings  are  more 
in  evidence  in  the  United  States  than  in  Great 
Britain.  For  one  example  only, — the  English 
man  likes  to  build  about  his  suburban  acre  a 
brick  wall  tipt  with  broken  glass,  whereas  the 
American  often  does  not  put  even  a  wire  fence  or 
a  low  hedge  about  his  home,  but  lets  his  grounds 
run  into  those  of  his  neighbor  indistinguishably. 
Among  the  British  we  find  individualism  run 
ning  over  into  eccentricity  often.  It  was  one  of 
68 


THE   AMERICANS   AND   THE   BRITISH 

the  shrewdest  British  observers,  Walter  Bagehot, 
who  askt  whether  the  inhabitants  of  the  United 
Kingdom  were  not  "above  all  other  nations 
divided  from  the  rest  of  the  world,  insular  both 
in  situation  and  in  mind."  It  was  a  German 
philosopher,  Novalis,  who  declared  a  century 
earlier  that  "every  Englishman  is  an  island." 
No  doubt  this  insularity  has  its  advantages;  it 
leads  to  an  undoubting  pride  and  to  an  imper 
turbability  of  temper,  that  may  be  sources  of 
strength  to  a  nation,  stiffening  its  self-reliance. 
But  the  disadvantages  are  indisputable  also;  and 
we  Americans  need  not  regret  that  we  are  less 
insular  than  our  kin  across  the  sea.  We  seem 
to  be  a  little  more  hospitable  to  ideas  from  other 
countries;  we  are  apparently  more  responsive 
to  the  social  appeal;  we  are  a  little  more  sympa 
thetic  and  perhaps  a  little  less  self-sufficient. 
Even  if  we  are  to  the  full  as  conceited,  we  are 
somewhat  more  willing  to  learn  from  others. 

The  ingenious  French  philosopher,  M.  Le 
Bon,  commenting  on  the  motto  of  the  Revolution, 
"Liberty,  Equality  and  Fraternity,"  declared 
that  the  real  difference  between  the  French  and 
the  British  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  French  were 
enamored  of  Equality  and  cared  little  for  Liberty, 
while  the  British  insisted  on  Liberty  and  never 
gave  a  thought  to  Equality.  And  when  I  once 
quoted  this  to  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling,  he  instantly 
69 


THE   AMERICANS   AND   THE   BRITISH 

added  his  own  comment  to  the  effect  that  what 
the  American  really  preferred  was  Fraternity;— 
"He  is  a  good  fellow  himself,  and  he  expects 
you  to  be  one."  This  spontaneous  suggestion 
seems  to  be  a  recognition  that  friendliness,  a 
regard  for  one's  fellow  creatures, — the  social 
instinct,  in  short, — may  be  more  often  lookt  for 
among  us  Americans  than  among  our  British 
cousins. 

The  liking  for  liberty,  the  excessive  individu 
ality,  the  habit  of  fighting  for  his  own  hand,  all 
tend  to  develop  in  the  British  a  certain  hardness. 
Two  centuries  ago  the  *  Plaindealer '  of  Wycher- 
ley  was  a  popular  play,  its  hero  being  sympathetic 
to  British  audiences;  and  Manly  is  frankly  brutal 
in  word  and  deed.  The  same  desire  to  give  pain 
is  visible  in  the  long  history  of  British  literary 
criticism,  from  Gosson's  'School  of  Abuse'  to 
Pope's  'Dunciad'  and  from  the  quarterly  re 
viewers  of  a  century  ago  to  the  violent  vulgarity 
of  the  Saturday  Review  to-day. 

In  this,  as  in  not  a  few  other  aspects,  Doctor 
Johnson  is  typical  of  the  less  pleasant  qualities  of 
his  race;  he  was  a  broad-shouldered  brute,  arro 
gant  and  offensive  and  ever  ready  to  trample  on 
anybody  who  was  weaker  than  himself.  It  is 
characteristic  of  him  that  he  was  proud  of  the 
letter  he  wrote  to  his  friend  and  benefactress, 
Mrs.  Thrale,  on  her  second  marriage, — a  letter 
70 


THE   AMERICANS   AND  THE  BRITISH 

absolutely  indefensible,  ungrateful  and  ungentle- 
manly,  coarse  and  rough,  and  above  all  carefully 
phrased  to  convey  the  utmost  of  insult  to  a  woman 
from  whom  he  had  received  only  kindness.  Con 
trast  Johnson  with  Franklin,  his  urbane  American 
contemporary,  who  is  quite  as  typically  a  man  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  Or  in  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  again  contrast  the  scolding  Carlyle  with  the 
gentle  Emerson.  Carlyle  is  a  burly  bully,  a 
peasant  with  genius,  malignantly  envious  of  all 
the  rival  authors  of  his  time  and  ever  ready  to 
pour  out  his  scorn  on  his  betters.  Emerson  is  a 
gentleman,  low-voiced,  courteous  and  kindly,  and 
yet  stalwart  in  his  sturdy  manliness. 

The  French  proverb  tells  us  that  every  man 
has  the  qualities  of  his  faults  and  the  faults  of  his 
qualities;  and  what  is  true  of  the  individual  is  no 
less  true  of  the  race.  In  other  words,  the  fault 
is  often  only  the  excess  of  the  quality;  and  it  is 
impossible  to  deny  that  there  are  certain  com 
pensating  advantages  to  be  found  in  this  least 
agreeable  characteristic  of  the  British.  It  seems 
to  be  responsible  in  part  for  their  steady  insistence 
on  their  rights  and  for  their  refusal  to  be  overrid 
den.  Their  devotion  to  liberty  and  their  exces 
sive  individualism  have  made  them  far  swifter 
to  denounce  abuses  than  the  more  sympathetic 
and  more  tolerant  Americans. 

The  chronic  protester  is  not  a  pleasant  person- 


THE   AMERICANS   AND   THE   BRITISH 

ality;  but  he  performs  a  most  'useful  function; 
he  is  the  watch-dog  of  liberty, — the  price  of  which 
is  eternal  vigilance.  The  kindliness  and  the 
social  feeling  of  the  Americans  tend  to  make  them 
shrink  from  protest  against  trifling  abuses  and 
unimportant  infringements  of  public  rights.  The 
individuality  of  the  British,  on  the  other  hand, 
their  bull-headed  harshness,  tend  to  make  an  act 
of  protest  congenial  to  them.  Before  a  petty 
infraction  of  right  the  long-suffering  Americans 
are  inclined  to  submit  with  a  laugh,  admitting 
that  the  joke  is  on  them,  whereas  the  British  fail 
to  see  the  joke  and  rise  up  in  their  wrath.  They 
refuse  to  pay  an  overcharge;  and  if  they  are  com 
pelled  by  circumstances,  they  appeal  the  case, 
— or  they  write  to  the  Times.  And  when  enough 
letters  have  been  written  to  the  Times,  public 
opinion  is  aroused  at  last;  and  then  the  matter  is 
quickly  settled.  If  the  hotels  of  Europe  are  now 
cleaner  than  they  were  half  a  century  ago,  with 
larger  towels  and  wash-basins,  with  better  sani 
tary  conveniences,  our  thanks  are  due  to  two 
generations  of  travelers  from  the  British  Isles 
who  were  unceasing  in  complaint  whenever  they 
failed  to  find  what  they  wanted  and  when  they 
did  find  what  they  did  not  want. 

So    far    we    have  seen    that    the    Americans 
differ  from  the  British,  first  and  foremost  in  that 
we  have  ever  been  free  from  feudalism  which 
72 


THE   AMERICANS   AND   THE   BRITISH 

still  keeps  alive  in  the  British  Isles  the  caste 
system  and  the  pervading  snobbishness  that 
necessarily  accompanies  it;  and,  second,  that 
our  individualism  is  more  restrained  than  theirs 
by  the  social  instinct.  Perhaps  this  last  difference 
is  due  in  part  at  least  to  the  commingling  here  of 
many  other  stocks  than  the  Anglo-Saxon,  even 
if  the  Anglo-Saxon  stock  still  supplies  the  social 
framework.  As  Walt  Whitman  wrote  on  the 
occasion  of  the  three  hundredth  anniversary 
of  the  founding  of  the  city  of  Santa  Fe— older 
than  any  of  the  towns  first  settled  by  the  Eng 
lish — we  have  been  inclined  "tacitly  to  abandon 
ourselves  to  the  notion  that  our  United  States 
have  been  fashioned  from  the  British  Isles  only, 
and  essentially  form  a  second  England  only;'* 
and  the  poet  added  that  "many  leading  traits 
of  our  future  national  personality,  and  some  of  the 
best  ones,  will  certainly  prove  to  have  originated 
from  other  than  British  stock."  It  is  not  with 
out  significance  that  the  most  distinguisht  of 
American  painters  and  the  most  prominent  of 
American  sculptors  are  both  of  them  of  French 
descent,  La  Farge  and  Saint-Gaudens,  and  that 
perhaps  the  most  popular  of  American  compo 
sers  is  of  Portuguese  descent,  Sousa. 

If  we  Americans  were  of  a  purely  British  stock, 
we  should  not  be  what  we  are— at  least  if  we  may 
judge  by  the  record  of  the  Australians,  who  have 
73 


THE   AMERICANS   AND   THE   BRITISH 

accomplisht  nothing  as  yet  in  literature  or  in  art 
or  in  science.  The  Australians  are  now  more  in 
number  than  we  were  when  we  separated  our 
selves  from  Great  Britain;  and  yet  they  have 
not  produced  a  single  man  of  eminence.  Indeed, 
it  may  be  doubted  whether  one  American  in  ten 
can  mention  the  name  of  a  single  native  Aus 
tralian  or  has  ever  read  a  single  volume  by  a 
native  Australian  author.  The  Australians  seem 
to  afford  an  extreme  example  of  the  disadvantages 
of  inbreeding,  whereas  we  Americans  reveal  the 
advantages  of  a  commingling  of  stocks,  which 
has  quickened  our  sluggish  British  blood. 

We  have  not  only  been  swift  to  assimilate  the 
foreigner  himself,  we  have  also  been  receptive 
to  foreign  ideas.  In  his  '  Remarks  on  a  National 
Literature,'  published  four  score  years  ago, 
Channing  urged  Americans  to  study  French  and 
German  to  get  out  of  narrowly  British  influence. 
It  is  well  to  remember  that  the  Transcendental 
movement  had  its  origin,  not  in  Great  Britain, 
but  in  Germany,  and  also  that  the  later  Ameri 
can  novelists,  especially  Mr.  Howells  and  Mr. 
James,  sought  their  models,  not  in  Great  Britain, 
but  in  France  or  in  Russia.  More  or  less  com 
plete  translations  of  Balzac,  of  Turgenef,  and  of 
Tolstoi,  were  undertaken  in  the  United  States 
long  before  a  like  effort  was  made  in  the  British 
Isles.  American  painters  (even  tho  they  may 
74 


THE   AMERICANS   AND   THE   BRITISH 

sometimes  settle  in  London  to  sell  their  pictures) 
are  likely  to  go  to  Paris  to  learn  the  technic  of 
their  craft;  and  if  architecture  is  to-day  a  living 
art  in  the  United  States  with  a  host  of  ardent 
practitioners  wrestling  new  problems  as  best 
they  can,  one  reason  may  be  found  in  the  train 
ing  and  in  the  stimulus  which  returning  students 
have  brought  back  from  Paris.  And  as  the 
American  goes  to  France  for  instruction  in  art, 
so  he  goes  to  Germany  for  training  in  science. 
It  is  not  at  Oxford  or  at  Cambridge  that  the 
graduates  of  our  American  colleges  matriculate, 
when  they  wish  to  pursue  their  studies  further, 
but  at  Berlin  and  at  the  other  German  univer 
sities.  If  a  number  of  American  students  are 
now  at  Oxford  on  Rhodes  scholarships  this  is 
simply  because  they  have  been  paid  to  go  there; 
and  the  result  of  their  studying  there  is  still  highly 
problematic. 

Perhaps  it  is  to  be  credited  to  the  influence  of 
Paris  and  Berlin, — altho  it  may  be  due  from  free 
dom  from  caste  and  to  relaxing  of  insularity, — 
but  whatever  the  cause  there  is  a  wide  differ 
ence  between  the  attitude  of  the  American  pub 
lic  toward  art  and  science  and  the  attitude  of  the 
British  public.  Here  is  where  Matthew  Arnold's 
mistake  is  most  obvious  and  here  is  where  the 
gulf  is  widest  between  the  American  people  and 
the  British  middle  class.  We  have  defects  of  our 
75 


THE   AMERICANS   AND   THE   BRITISH 

own,  but  they  are  not  the  special  defects  of  the 
British  middle  class.  Of  course,  a  Philistine  is 
a  Philistine  the  world  over;  he  sets  up  the  gates 
of  Gath  wherever  he  goes,  and  he  worships  Baal 
no  less  in  the  new  world  than  in  the  old.  But 
none  the  less  is  the  American  Philistine  quite  un 
like  the  British  Philistine  whom  Arnold  detested 
and  denounced.  The  American  Philistine  may 
not  see  the  light  any  more  clearly  than  his  Brit 
ish  cousin,  but  he  is  willing  enough  to  accept  it 
when  it  is  revealed  to  him.  He  may  be  ignorant 
but  he  is  not  hostile.  Now,  if  we  can  believe 
Arnold  himself,  the  British  Philistine  is  forever 
sinning  against  light,  shutting  his  eyes  to  it  and 
despising  it. 

As  an  evidence  of  this  difference,  take  the  con 
sideration  paid  to  education  in  Great  Britain 
and  in  the  United  States.  Here  the  whole  pub 
lic  is  interested  in  education,  and  believes  in  it, 
and  is  willing  to  be  taxt  for  it.  There  the  pub 
lic  seems  to  be  profoundly  uninterested,  except 
in  so  far  as  education  intertwines  itself  with  sec 
tarian  strife  and  becomes  an  issue  in  partisan 
politics.  The  one  note  which  recurs  again  and 
again  in  the  reports  of  the  Mosely  Educational 
Commissioners  is  that  of  surprize  at  the  esteem 
in  which  education  was  held  in  America;  and 
in  private  conversation  the  members  of  that  com 
mission  often  declared  that  nothing  of  the  sort 


THE  AMERICANS  AND  THE  BRITISH 

could  be  said  about  England.  In  Great  Britain 
there  is  not  even  now  anything  that  can  properly 
be  called  an  educational  system;  and  practical 
men  seem  to  care  little  for  thoroness  of  training. 
A  friend  of  mine  in  London  told  me  a  few 
years  ago  that  his  son  was  to  be  an  engineer,  going 
straight  from  Eton  into  the  works  of  a  firm  of 
world-wide  reputation.  I  askt  if  the  lad  was 
not  to  study  at  all  in  any  technical  school;  and 
the  father  answered  that  the  managers  of  the 
works  preferred  to  take  him  untaught  and  break 
him  in  themselves.  This  hostility  of  practical 
men  in  Great  Britain  toward  scientific  prepara 
tion  is  significant;  it  seems  to  imply  either  a 
narrowness  of  outlook  on  the  part  of  the  managers 
of  the  works,  or  else  hidden  deficiencies  on  the 
part  of  the  technological  schools.  Here  in  the 
United  States  the  entire  graduating  class  of  a 
technological  school  is  often  engaged  in  advance 
by  a  single  company.  The  British  seem  to  exalt 
the  practical  far  above  the  theoretical,  and  even 
to  feel  a  certain  contempt  for  the  latter.  We 
Americans  strive  to  unite  the  two  as  best  we  can, 
knowing  by  experience  that  the  man  of  scientific 
education  can  always  sooner  or  later  pick  up  for 
himself  the  practice  of  the  shop,  whereas  the 
man  with  only  a  shop-training  will  be  heavily 
handicapt  when  he  may  later  seek  to  attain  to  the 
higher  levels  of  his  profession.  We  cannot  re- 
77 


THE  AMERICANS   AND  THE  BRITISH 

frain  from  wondering  sometimes  if  the  British 
practicality  and  dislike  of  logic  is  not  carried  a 
little  too  far  and  if  they  are  not  inclined  to  think 
the  acceptance  of  theory  too  high  a  price  to  pay 
for  efficiency. 

A  score  of  years  ago  Colonel  Higginson  sug 
gested  that  the  American  had  "an  added  drop 
more  of  nervous  fluid"  than  an  Englishman; 
and  Matthew  Arnold  pickt  out  the  saying  as 
an  unfortunate  instance  of  American  boastful- 
ness,  whereupon  Colonel  Higginson  promptly 
retorted  that  it  was  not  a  boast  at  all,  but  a  plain 
statement  of  a  fact,  which  might  be  either  for 
tunate  or  unfortunate,  as  the  future  should  de 
termine.  It  is  easy  to  conceive  of  circumstances 
in  which  the  possession  of  "  an  added  drop  more  of 
nervous  fluid"  might  be  a  serious  disadvantage. 
It  is,  of  course,  easier  still  to  see  that  it  is  more 
likely  to  be  an  advantage.  But  no  one  com 
petent  to  express  an  opinion  will  contradict 
Colonel  Higginson's  assertion  and  deny  that  the 
American  has  "an  added  drop  more  of  nerv 
ous  fluid"  than  the  Englishman,  whether  this 
is  likely  to  prove  a  bane  or  a  boon.  That  keen 
student  of  social  characteristics,  Walter  Bagehot, 
would  have  insisted  unhesitatingly  that  it  was  a 
bane,  for  he  always  maintained  that  the  success 
ful  working  of  the  British  constitution,  with  its 
legal  fictions  and  its  hollow  shams  of  all  sorts, 


THE  AMERICANS   AND  THE   BRITISH 

was  possible  only  because  the  British  people  as 
a  whole  was  slow  and  stolid. 

To  our  possession  of  the  added  drop  Colonel 
Higginson  ascribed  our  "  specific  levity,"  the 
lightness  of  touch  to  be  noted  in  our  literature. 
He  pointed  out  that  even  in  literary  criticism  the 
British  seemed  to  consider  boxing  as  the  only 
manly  art  and  to  scorn  the  more  adroit  methods 
of  the  fencer.  "It  is  a  curious  fact,"  so  he  de 
clared,  "that  as  the  best  American  manners  in 
cline  to  the  French,  and  not  the  English  model, 
so  the  tendency  of  American  literary  style  is  to 
the  finer  methods,  quicker  repartees,  and  more 
delicate  turns"  of  the  Parisian  masters  of  fence. 
If  this  is  admitted  the  cause  is  to  be  sought  not 
only  in  conscious  acceptance  of  French  standards 
in  these  matters,  but  also  in  the  American  avoid 
ance  of  British  harshness,  in  the  relaxing  of  in 
sularity  and  in  the  readier  response  to  the  social 
instinct.  Here  again  the  examples  that  recur  to 
the  mind  at  once  are  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  the 
one  growling  and  destructive,  the  other  courteous 
and  stimulating.  Perhaps  this  superior  refine 
ment,  most  unexpected  in  a  country  of  pioneers, 
is  the  result  of  the  "added  drop  of  nervous  fluid"; 
and  perhaps,  like  that  drop,  it  may  be  a  possession 
for  which  we  shall  have  to  pay  sooner  or  later. 

The  "specific  levity"  which  the  American  often 
has,  and  which  his  British  cousin  is  far  less  likely 
79 


THE  AMERICANS   AND  THE  BRITISH 

to  have,  assumes  various  disguises.  It  masquer 
ades  as  the  "  American  joke,"  which  the  for 
eigner  fails  to  take.  It  underlies  the  American 
sense-of-humor,  which  is  so  portentous  and  so 
baffling  to  the  foreigner.  It  is  an  element  in 
the  good  humor  which  accounts  for  the  tolerance 
and  the  sympathy  that  observant  travelers  from 
Europe  are  swift  to  perceive.  It  sustains  that 
omnipresent  optimism  which  is  one  of  the  recog 
nized  characteristics  of  the  American — and  which 
is  almost  wholly  lacking  in  our  kin  across  the 
sea.  It  may  even  be  accountable  in  some  meas 
ure  for  the  friendliness  of  our  social  intercourse 
and  for  our  casual  confidence  in  our  fellow-man. 
Altho  undue  introspection  may  be  as  unwhole 
some  for  a  nation  as  it  is  for  an  individual,  yet  it 
is  well  that  we  should  try  to  discover  the  reasons 
for  the  opinions  which  foreigners  hold  of  us.  It 
is  well  that  we  should  take  stock  of  ourselves 
from  time  to  time,  casting  up  our  accounts  and 
charging  up  to  profit  and  loss  on  the  balance- 
sheet  of  the  race.  Of  course,  we  must  admit  in 
advance  that  any  conclusion  we  may  arrive  at  is 
but  temporary  whether  it  concerns  our  neighbors 
or  ourselves.  Professor  William  James  has  de 
clared — he  is  speaking  of  religion,  but  what  he 
says  is  as  true  in  other  fields  of  human  interest — 
"that  the  safe  thing  is  surely  to  recognize  that 
all  the  insights  of  creatures  of  a  day  like  ourselves 
80 


v/ 

THE  AMERICANS   AND  THE  BRITISH 

must  be  provisional.  The  wisest  of  critics  is  an 
altering  being,  subject  to  the  better  insight  of  the 
morrow,  and  right  at  any  moment  only  'up  to 
date'  and  'on  the  whole." ' 

There  is  a  double  difficulty  in  comparing  the 
characteristics  of  two  nationalities,  due  to  the 
fact  that  they  are  both  of  them  in  constant  proc 
ess  of  modification, — a  process  more  evident  and 
more  rapid  here  in  the  United  States,  but  still 
obvious  enough  in  Great  Britain.  Altho  the 
English-speaking  race  is  mainly  of  Teutonic 
origin,  it  has  been  subjected  to  all  sorts  of  influ 
ences  in  the  long  centuries  before  the  American 
Revolution  and  in  the  century  and  a  third  since 
that  fortunate  event,  until  it  is  now  no  longer 
easy  for  the  two  peoples  that  compose  it  always 
to  understand  one  another  as  it  is  so  needful  that 
they  should,  for  the  best  interests  of  both.  Using 
the  same  language,  inheriting  the  same  law,  ruled 
by  the  same  political  traditions,  they  are  alike 
and  unlike;  and  perhaps  the  final  word  in  regard 
to  their  relation  to  each  other  was  written  many 
years  ago  by  that  historian  of  the  'Winning  of 
the  West,'  who  is  now  the  President  of  the  United 
States  and  who  declared  in  his  first  volume  that 
"Americans  belong  to  the  English  race  only  in 
the  sense  in  which  Englishmen  belong  to  the 
German." 

(1905-) 

81 


"BLOOD    IS   THICKER  THAN 
WATER" 


" BLOOD    IS   THICKER   THAN   WATER" 

ANY  one  who  considers  curiously  the  shift 
ing  international  relations  of  the  past  hun 
dred  years  is  likely  to  find  not  a  few  interesting 
facts.  He  will  note  that  Austria,  which  was  the 
sole  enemy  of  Italy  thruout  the  most  of  the  nine 
teenth  century,  was  the  ally  of  Italy  in  the  final 
years  of  that  period.  He  will  remark  that 
Russia,  attackt  twice  by  France,  once  under 
Napoleon  I  and  again  under  Napoleon  III,  was 
the  sole  ally  of  the  Third  Republic  at  the  end  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  He  will  observe  that 
the  French  and  the  English,  foes  for  five  hundred 
years,  fought  side  by  side  in  the  Crimean  war, 
and  that  thereafter  they  speedily  resumed  their 
former  attitude  of  mutual  suspicion.  And  finally 
he  will  have  to  record  that  the  United  States,  hav 
ing  had  only  three  European  wars  in  its  century 
and  a  quarter  of  independent  existence,  seemed 
to  have  no  friend  among  the  nations  of  the  world 
when  it  entered  upon  the  third  of  these  wars,  that 
against  Spain,  except  Great  Britain  against  which  it 
had  waged  the  two  others,  and  with  which  it  had 
been  again  on  the  very  verge  of  war  less  than  forty 
years  earlier.  Perhaps  in  the  future  no  event 
85 


U BLOOD   IS   THICKER   THAN   WATER" 

that  happened  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  will  seem  more  significant  than  the  growth 
of  friendly  feeling  between  the  two  peoples  who 
speak  the  English  language  and  who  were  sepa 
rated  violently  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

Never  before  in  the  history  of  the  world  has 
the  spectacle  been  seen  of  two  great  nations 
possessing  the  same  language  and  inheriting  the 
same  political  traditions.  Never  before  has  a 
colony,  having  achieved  its  independence,  over 
taken  and  surpast  the  mother-country,  in  size 
and  in  resources,  in  population  and  in  power. 
Colonies  have  been  able  to  set  up  for  themselves, 
as  a  rule,  only  when  the  parent-nation  was  falling 
into  its  final  weakness.  But  in  the  present  case, 
the  expansion  of  the  British  Empire,  or  at  least 
a  large  part  of  this,  has  taken  place  since  the 
United  States  declared  their  independence,  and 
while  they  were  also  engaged  in  their  own  expan 
sion.  The  political  traditions  of  the  English- 
speaking  race  have  been  transplanted  in  America 
without  having  been  uprooted  in  the  British 
Isles;  and  the  stock  has  now  two  branches,  both 
of  them  flourishing,  one  British  and  the  other 
American.  It  was  an  English  historian,  the  late 
John  Richard  Green,  who  declared  more  than 
a  score  of  years  ago  that  the  future  history  of 
the  English-speaking  race  was  thereafter  to  be 
unrolled  rather  on  the  shores  of  the  Hudson  and 
86 


of  the  mighty  Mississippi  than  by  the  banks  of 
the  Tweed  and  of  the  tiny  Thames. 

Nothing  in  the  extraordinary  nineteenth  cen 
tury  is  more  extraordinary  than  the  increase  in 
the  number  of  those  who  speak  English,  who  are 
ruled  by  English  law,  and  who  cherish  English 
political  ideals.  Probably  it  is  not  too  much  to 
say  that  the  history  of  the  twentieth  century  will 
be  influenced  more  by  the  peoples  who  speak 
English  than  by  the  peoples  who  speak  any  other 
tongue.  The  course  of  events  in  the  hundred 
years  that  lie  before  us  will  depend,  in  large 
measure,  upon  the  British  and  the  Americans, 
and  more  especially  upon  the  greater  or  less 
cordiality  which  shall  exist  between  the  two 
nations.  If  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States 
choose  to  act  together  they  can  work  their  will, 
for  there  is  not  likely  to  be  built  up  any  combina 
tion  of  nations  able  to  withstand  them.  If  they 
quarrel  with  each  other  and  neutralize  their  com 
bined  weight,  then  it  will  not  be  so  difficult  for 
the  other  peoples  to  have  their  own  way.  Any 
attempt  is  interesting,  therefore,  to  consider  con 
scientiously  the  feelings  of  the  British  toward 
the  Americans  and  of  the  Americans  toward  the 
British. 

There  is  no  need  now  to  dwell  at  length  on  the 
points  of  likeness  and  of  unlikeness  discoverable 
between  the  British  and  the  Americans,  for  these 


we  all  know  more  or  less  accurately.  But  it 
may  be  well  to  note  that  the  British  do  not  under 
stand  these  differences  as  clearly  as  we  do.  They 
are  in  the  habit  of  saying  that  they  do  not  look 
upon  us  Americans  as  foreigners;  and  their  in 
tent  is  obviously  friendly,  even  tho  the  result  may 
be  dangerous.  For  if  they  do  not  consider  us 
foreigners,  how  do  they  consider  us?  As  kin 
across  the  sea? — in  other  words  as  moved  by 
exactly  the  same  motives  and  feelings  as  they 
are?  Now,  altho  we  Americans  are  far  more 
closely  related  to  the  British  than  we  are  to  the 
people  of  any  other  nationality,  we  are  not  at  all 
British  in  our  motives  and  our  feelings.  We  are 
very  far  from  being  British;  and  it  is  the  begin 
ning  of  wisdom  for  the  British  themselves  to 
understand  this  fundamental  fact,  once  for  all. 
They  are  so  proud  of  being  British  that  they  do 
not  perceive  how  any  other  people  can  fail  to 
regret  not  being  British;  and  out  of  kindness  of 
heart  they  are  willing  to  overlook  our  casual  di 
vergencies  from  British  standards;  they  are 
ready  to  welcome  us  into  the  fold,  from  which  we 
broke  out  a  century  and  a  quarter  ago.  They 
do  not  see  that  we  base  our  pride  on  being  Ameri 
can,  that  is  to  say  on  being  not  British;  and  they 
need  to  get  it  into  their  heads  that  we  have  not 
the  slightest  desire  to  be  British.  Herein  we 
differ  sharply  from  the  Canadians  and  from 
88 


"BLOOD  is  THICKER  THAN  WATER" 

the  other  Colonials,  who  persist  in  calling  Great 
Britain  "home" — even  tho  they  may  never  have 
set  foot  on  the  British  Isles. 

National  pride  is  ever  a  source  of  national 
strength,  however  absurd  it  may  seem  to  those 
who  do  not  belong  to  that  particular  nation; 
and  even  national  boastfulness  may  have  some 
hidden  advantage  of  its  own.  As  Mr.  Howells 
has  pointed  out,  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  are 
guilty  of  the  same  self-praise: — "They  all  take 
credit  to  themselves  nationally  for  virtues  which 
belong  rather  sparingly  to  the  whole  of  humanity; 
they  speak  of  English  fairness,  and  German 
honesty,  and  American  independence,  and  they 
really  make  themselves  believe  that  other  peo 
ples  are  destitute  of  the  qualities  which  they 
severally  arrogate  to  themselves.  In  the  mean 
time  the  other  nations  affect  to  smile  at  a  vanity 
which  they  could  not  imaginably  indulge;  but 
in  fact  they  are  only  waiting  their  turn  in  the 
international  scalp-dance  to  celebrate  themselves 
with  the  same  savage  sincerity." 

Until  quite  recently  our  attitude  toward  them, 
and  their  attitude  toward  us,  was  not  unlike  that 
of  the  Scotch  engineer  of  the  ocean-steamer 
toward  the  captain,  when  he  said,  "He's  ma 
friend, — but  I  dinna  like  him!"  Even  now 
,orobably  nothing  would  take  the  average  Eng 
lishman  more  by  surprize  than  to  discover  the 


tolerant  contempt  with  which  he  is  regarded  by 
the  average  American,  as  an  old  fogy, — or  in  our 
own  expressive  phrase — as  a  "back  number." 
Probably  also  the  average  American  would  be 
equally  astonisht  if  he  should  discover  that  the 
average  Englishman  is  likely  to  consider  him  a 
little  too  sharp  in  business  matters,  too  ready  to 
indulge  in  what  the  British  would  call  "Yankee 
tricks."  But  it  is  wholesome  for  each  of  them 
to  perceive  clearly  the  image  of  himself  that  is 
reflected  in  the  eyes  of  the  other.  The  ties  of 
blood  which  bind  the  British  and  the  Americans 
are  disadvantageous  in  so  far  as  they  may  lend 
to  any  disagreement  the  aspect  of  a  family  quarrel, 
bitterer  always  than  any  dispute  between  those 
who  are  wholly  unrelated  to  each  other.  As  George 
Eliot  once  suggested,  only  those  near  and  dear  to 
us  know  how  to  inflict  the  blow  that  hurts  most. 
It  is  scarcely  a  paradox  to  say  that  the  possession 
of  a  common  language  has  often  been  an  obstacle 
to  a  better  feeling  between  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States,  since  it  has  insured  a  wider 
and  a  swifter  diffusion  of  journalistic  recrimina 
tion.  It  is  not  difficult  for  newspapers  on  either 
side  of  the  Atlantic  to  throw  stones;  but  one 
nation  or  the  other  may  be  called  upon  suddenly 
to  pay  for  the  broken  windows.  And  not  merely 
are  the  newspapers  at  fault,  but  also  the  men 
of  letters,  who  cross  the  Atlantic  and  set  down 
90 


"BLOOD  is  THICKER  THAN  WATER" 

the  record  of  the  things  they  have  seen.  What 
wandering  Germans  or  French  might  write 
mattered  little  to  us,  but  we  were  hurt  by  the 
unfriendly  tone  of  British  travelers,  like  Mrs. 
Trollope  and  Captain  Marryat.  We  cared  noth 
ing  about  the  adverse  report  of  Maurice  Sand, 
for  example,  while  we  resented  the  ungrateful 
caricaturing  of  Charles  Dickens. 

It  may  be  admitted  that  we  Americans  were  a 
little  too  thin-skinned  half  a  century  ago.  But 
our  British  cousins  were  quite  as  touchy;  they 
winced  when  Emerson  etched  their  portraits  in 
his  austere  study  of  'English  Traits';  and  they 
cried  out  in  great  pain  at  certain  innocent  re 
marks  of  the  gentle  Hawthorne,  altho  the  very 
title  of  his  book  on  England — 'Our  Old  Home' 
—was  proof  of  the  friendliness  of  his  attitude. 
Their  protests  drew  from  Hawthorne  a  letter  to 
his  publisher  in  which  he  asserted  that  "the 
monstrosity  of  their  self-conceit  is  such  that  any 
thing  short  of  unlimited  admiration  impresses 
them  as  malicious  caricature."  Of  course,  the 
British  are  not  peculiar  in  this  self-conceit;  we 
Americans  have  our  full  share  also;  in  their  turn 
the  French  and  the  Germans  are  as  richly  en 
dowed  with  it;  and  now  even  the  Japanese  seem 
likely  to  acquire  it.  Quite  possibly,  indeed,  a 
lack  of  this  self-conceit  might  be  evidence  of 
some  weakness  in  the  fiber  of  the  nation. 

91 


With  every  desire  to  hold  the  scales  even,  it  is 
impossible  not  to  feel  that  British  travelers  in 
the  United  States  have  been  far  more  blameworthy 
than  American  travelers  in  Great  Britain.  There 
was  a  frank  vulgarity  in  the  books  of  Dickens, 
of  Mrs.  Trollope  and  of  Captain  Marryat,  which 
finds  no  echo  in  the  books  of  Irving,  of  Emerson  and 
of  Hawthorne.  Consider  how  cordial  is  the  ap 
preciation  of  England  in  'Bracebridge  Hall';  and 
then  recall  the  fact  that  in  the  'Sketch-Book,' 
publisht  more  than  four  score  years  ago,  the  gra 
cious  Irving  was  moved  to  utter  a  warning  that 
the  offensive  tone  of  British  writers  toward 
America  was  certain  to  work  harm,  in  that  it 
would  tend  to  destroy  the  friendly  feeling  of  the 
United  States  toward  Great  Britain,  a  friendli 
ness  of  which  the  mother-country  would  as 
suredly  feel  the  need  in  the  future. 

The  warning  was  not  heeded;  and  we  can 
find  the  same  contemptuous  arrogance  in  several 
generations  of  British  authors.  It  is  obtruded 
in  Sydney  Smith's  famous  passage  assuring  us 
that  nobody  in  Europe  knew  any  American 
author,  or  painter  or  inventor.  It  is  perceptible 
in  Matthew  Arnold's  unfortunate  remark  that 
we  Americans  were  reading  the  works  of  "a 
native  author  named  Roe" — altho  at  that  very 
moment  the  British  were  reading  the  works  of  a 
native  author  named  Haggard,  and  the  French 
92 


"BLOOD  is  THICKER  THAN  WATER" 

were  reading  the  works  of  a  native  author  named 
Ohnet.  Difficult,  indeed,  is  it  for  an  English 
man  not  to  assume  the  meridian  of  Greenwich 
as  the  basis  of  all  measurements,  literary  no  less 
than  geographic.  Courteous  as  Matthew  Arnold 
was  by  nature,  there  are  not  a  few  passages  in  his 
several  papers  on  America  in  which  we  are  re 
minded  of  Thackeray's  description  of  "that  ex 
ceedingly  impertinent  and  amusing  demi-nod  of 
recognition  which  is  practised  in  England  only, 
and  only  to  perfection  by  university  men, — and 
which  seems  to  say,  'Confound  you,— what  do 
you  do  here?'" 

This  contemptuous  arrogance  of  Great  Britain 
toward  the  United  States  was  sustained  by  a 
comprehensive  ignorance.  In  the  preface  to  the 
'Pathfinder'  Cooper  records  that  when  a  man- 
of-war  was  to  be  built  on  Lake  Ontario  a  hun 
dred  years  ago,  the  British  sent  out  frames  and 
blocks,  as  tho  there  was  no  timber  in  Canada; 
and  they  provided  also  water-casks  and  all  the 
requisite  apparatus  for  distilling  salt-water.  And 
half  a  century  later  the  wife  of  Hamilton  Fish 
at  dinner  in  London  was  asked  by  the  wife  of  a 
British  cabinet  minister,  what  were  the  Great 
Lakes  of  America?  "Of  course,  I  know  Wen- 
ham  Lake,"  she  added;  "but  what  are  the 
others?"  Now,  Wenham  Lake  is  a  pond  some 
where  in  New  England,  the  ice  from  which  used 
93 


to  be  exported  to  England.  Ignorance  as  deep- 
rooted  as  this  is  explicable  only  by  a  total  lack 
of  interest;  and  this  ignorance  the  many  volumes 
put  forth  by  three  generations  of  British  trav 
elers  did  little  or  nothing  to  clear  away.  Not 
until  Mr.  Bryce  prepared  his  searching  study 
of  the  American  commonwealth  was  there  pub- 
lisht  any  book  of  British  authorship  which  could 
help  the  writer's  fellow-subjects  to  understand 
the  citizens  of  the  republic  across  the  water. 

While  there  was  in  Great  Britain  a  contemp 
tuous  arrogance  toward  America  sustained  by  an 
uninterested  ignorance,  there  was  in  the  United 
States,  a  state  of  feeling  not  so  easy  to  define, 
since  its  elements  were  almost  contradictory. 
There  was  a  pride  in  the  mother-country  and  a 
deference  for  the  island-home  of  the  race.  There 
was  a  disappointment,  constantly  renewed,  at 
the  British  failure  to  appreciate  us,  to  encourage 
our  youthful  efforts,  to  understand  us.  There 
was  also  an  inherited  hostility  toward  the  foe  we 
had  twice  fought;  and  there  was  even  a  certain 
rancor  toward  the  government  which  had  im 
prest  thousands  of  our  seamen,  which  had  wan 
tonly  burnt  the  Capitol  at  Washington,  and 
which  had  wickedly  let  loose  the  redskins  to 
scalp  women  and  children  along  our  borders. 

In  the  schoolbooks  of  history  placed  in  the 
hands  of  British  boys,  the  two  wars  with  the 
94 


United  States  are  dismissed  briefly,  whereas 
the  full  succession  of  events  is  recorded  at  length 
in  the  schoolbooks  placed  in  the  hands  of  Ameri 
can  boys.  For  a  century  every  generation  here 
grew  up  in  the  knowledge  that  the  only  European 
foe  we  had  ever  fought  was  Great  Britain;  and 
however  impartially  and  dispassionately  the  facts 
might  be  presented,  they  spoke  for  themselves, 
and  they  did  not  speak  in  favor  of  the  British. 
How  much  weight  is  to  be  attached  to  this  tra 
dition  of  hostility  handed  down  from  sire  to  son, 
it  is  difficult  to  declare;  but  there  is  no  denying 
that  it  had  a  weight  of  its  own.  An  inherited 
unfriendliness  like  this  would  be  softened  by 
time;  and  it  would  be  softened  also  by  the  in 
fluence  of  English  literature,  which  was  ever  at 
work,  bringing  home  to  us  the  kinship  of  the 
two  peoples,  if  this  benign  influence  had  not  been 
counteracted  to  some  extent  by  the  offensive 
attitude  taken  by  many  contemporary  British 
authors,  from  Sydney  Smith  to  Thomas  Carlyle. 
In  fairness  to  the  British,  it  must  needs  be 
noted  that  they  could  find  not  a  little  justification 
for  their  disparaging  opinions  in  the  bombastic 
boastfulness  of  many  of  our  politicians  and  of 
many  of  our  newspapers.  Tall  talk  about  mani 
fest  destiny  was  not  fitted  to  win  friends  for  us 
abroad,  while  at  home  it  was  certain  to  encourage 
foolish  visions  of  conquest.  As  one  who  was  a 
95 


schoolboy  when  the  Civil  War  began,  I  can 
testify  that  we  were  wont  to  look  at  the  map  of 
North  America  with  an  unthinking  wonder  why 
the  United  States  had  not  already  gone  down 
and  conquered  Mexico  and  gone  up  and  captured 
Canada  and  the  rest  of  British  America.  It  was 
one  of  the  indirect  benefits  of  the  Civil  War, 
that  our  schoolboys  are  to-day  free  from  these 
foolish  visions.  It  was  one  of  the  accompanying 
evils  of  the  Civil  War  that  the  unexpected  atti 
tude  of  Great  Britain  during  the  long  years  of  that 
strenuous  combat  revived  and  intensified  the  hos 
tility  of  the  American  people  toward  the  British. 
Only  those  who  are  now  old  enough  to  recall 
the  outbreak  of  that  bitter  struggle,  can  know 
how  sharp  was  our  disappointment  here  at  the  con 
duct  of  our  kin  across  the  sea.  There  was  com 
mercial  rivalry,  no  doubt,  and  there  was  inter 
national  jealousy,  of  course;  but,  after  all,  and 
despite  what  we  might  say  ourselves,  slavery  was 
at  the  core  of  the  conflict;  and  we  felt  justified 
in  hoping  for  the  sympathy  of  the  British  in  our 
grapple  with  that  mighty  evil.  Instead  of  sym 
pathy  we  were  greeted  with  insult.  The  Times 
and  the  Saturday  Review  and  Punch  were  rivals 
in  virulent  abuse.  In  all  the  House  of  Commons 
there  were  only  four  friends  of  the  Union, — as  I 
was  told,  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  in  London,  by 
one  of  the  four,  the  late  Lord  Houghton.  Our 


"  BLOOD  IS  THICKER  THAN  WATER" 

commerce  was  swept  from  the  sea  by  ships  built 
in  Great  Britain,  armed  in  Great  Britain  and 
manned  mainly  by  British  subjects.  And  less 
than  a  year  before  the  battle  of  Gettysburg, 
Gladstone,  then  a  member  of  the  cabinet,  de 
clared  in  a  speech  at  Newcastle  that  the  leaders 
of  the  South  had  "made  an  army;  they  are 
making,  it  appears,  a  navy;  and  they  have  made 
what  is  more  than  either,  they  have  made  a 
nation." 

No  part  of  the  function  of  a  true  poet  is  more 
important  than  his  power  to  voice  the  feeling  of 
the  people  in  moments  of  intense  national  emo 
tion;  and  no  poet  has  ever  more  satisfactorily 
accomplisht  this  much  of  his  duty  than  Lowell 
in  the  second  series  of  the  'Biglow  Papers.'  It 
was  in  the  first  winter  of  the  war,  not  long  after 
the  taking  of  the  Trent  and  the  giving  up  of 
Mason  and  Slidell,  that  Lowell  sent  forth  the 
stinging  stanzas  of  'Jonathan  to  John.' 

We  know  we've  got  a  cause,  John, 

Thet's  honest,  just,  an'  true; 
We  thought  't  would  win  applause,  John, 

Ef  nowheres  else,  from  you. 
Ole  Uncle  S.  sez  he,  "I  guess 

His  love  of  right,"  sez  he, 
"Hangs  by  a  rotten  fiber  o'  cotton: 

There's  natur'  in  J.  B., 
Ez  wal  'z  in  you  an'  me!" 


97 


"BLOOD  is  THICKER  THAN  WATER" 

Shall  it  be  love,  or  hate,  John  ? 

It's  you  thet's  to  decide; 
Ain't  your  bonds  held  by  Fate,  John, 

Like  all  the  world's  beside? 
Ole  Uncle  S.  sez  he,  "I  guess 

Wise  men  forgive,"  sez  he, 
"But  not  forgit;  an'  some  time  yit 

Thet  truth  may  strike  J.  B., 
Ez  wal  ez  you  an'  me!" 

The  firm  wisdom  of  Lincoln  settled  the  Trent 
affair;  and  the  statesmanlike  sagacity  of  a  later 
British  cabinet  made  possible  a  settlement  of  the 
Alabama  claims;  but  time  alone  could  efface  in 
America  the  memory  of  ill-will,  swiftly  revived 
by  any  mention  of  the  name  of  either  of  these 
British  ships.  The  payment  of  the  Alabama 
award  was  evidence  of  British  repentance;  and 
after  a  while  the  author  of  the  '  Biglow  Papers ' 
went  to  London  as  American  Minister  to  do 
what  he  could  to  foster  a  friendly  feeling.  At 
last,  more  than  thirty  years  after  the  seizure  of 
the  Trent,  came  the  Venezuela  message;  and 
then  it  was  most  unexpectedly  made  evident  that 
the  British  attitude  toward  America  had  changed 
completely.  The  language  of  the  American 
government  was  not  only  lacking  in  diplomatic 
courtesy,  it  was  needlessly  blunt.  Coming  from 
any  European  country,  it  would  have  been  met 
with  prompt  defiance.  Coming  from  the  United 
States,  the  British  government  disregarded  the 
98 


"BLOOD  is  THICKER  THAN  WATER" 

discourtesy  and  made  friendly  advances.  For 
the  first  time  in  the  long  history  of  the  interna 
tional  relations  of  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States,  the  British  recognized  the  tie  of  blood 
between  the  two  peoples. 

Conscious  of  their  own  friendliness,  the  Brit 
ish  were  rudely  shockt  by  the  obvious  unfriendli 
ness  of  the  Americans,  as  revealed  by  the  una 
nimity  with  which  Congress  voted  the  money 
Cleveland  had  askt  for.  This  shock  was  prob 
ably  useful,  in  so  far  as  it  forced  the  British  to 
consider  the  various  causes  of  the  antagonistic 
feeling  obviously  existing  in  the  United  States. 
To  discover  that  they  were  not  greatly  liked  over 
here  was  a  disagreeable  surprize;  and  it  was 
wholesome  that  they  should  be  made  to  ask 
themselves  whether  there  was  any  reason  why 
they  should  be  liked  by  us,  or,  indeed,  by  any 
other  country.  All  peoples  are  prone  to  let  their 
intense  national  pride  veil  from  them  the  fact 
that  there  is  rarely  any  cause  why  one  nation 
should  really  like  another  nation.  Every  nation 
is  so  acutely  aware  of  its  own  fine  qualities  that 
it  fails  to  appeciate  the  fact  that  other  peoples 
are  far  swifter  to  see  its  defects. 

The    same    chastening    experience    befell    us, 
half-a-dozen  years  later,  when  we  undertook  to 
free  Cuba  from  the  misgovernment  of  the  Span 
ish.     Firmly  convinced  of  the  disinterestedness 
99 


of  our  intentions,  we  were  taken  aback  to  dis 
cover  that  every  nation  of  continental  Europe 
discredited  our  motives,  distrusted  us,  and  dis 
liked  us.  In  our  isolation  we  found  only  one 
friend; — and  that  was  our  one  former  enemy. 
Just  how  much  actual  help  we  got  from  Great 
Britain  in  the  course  of  the  Spanish  war  may 
not  be  known  for  the  generation  or  two  after 
which  diplomatic  secrets  become  public  property; 
but  we  may  gage  the  importance  of  this  help 
by  recalling  the  shrill  protests  evoked  from  our 
adversary  and  from  the  many  friends  of  our  ad 
versary.  This  aid  and  comfort  was  the  more 
significant  in  that  it  came  from  the  head  rather 
than  from  the  heart,  since  Lord  Salisbury  was 
devoid  of  all  sentimental  sympathy  for  us  or  for 
our  ways.  Even  if  he  was  unexpugnably  an 
aristocrat,  he  was  also  a  statesman  with  an  eye 
to  the  future;  and  he  saw  no  profit  in  siding  with 
a  dying  nation.  He  found  that  the  time  had 
come  to  make  a  friend  of  the  lusty  young  people 
on  the  far  side  of  the  Western  Ocean. 

It  is  a  curious  characteristic  of  human  nature 
that  we  are  inclined  to  like  those  whom  we  have 
helpt,  as  we  are  also  inclined  to  dislike  those 
whom  we  have  injured.  So  long  as  the  British 
were  injuring  us,  as  they  did  when  they  were  im 
pressing  pur  seamen  and  when  they  were  allow 
ing  Alabamas  to  escape  from  their  ports,  they 
100 


"BLOOD  is  THICKER  THAN  WATER'" 

could  not  fail  to  dislike  us.  But  no  sooner  had 
they  lent  us  their  aid  than  their  feelings  changed 
about,  and  they  began  to  like  us,  and  to  find  good 
reason  for  their  liking.  They  began  to  claim  us 
as  kin  across  the  sea;  and  the  saying  that  "blood 
is  thicker  than  water," — which  had  fallen  from  the 
mouth  of  an  American  sailor  long  ago  as  he  went 
to  the  aid  of  a  British  ship, — found  a  frequent 
echo  on  their  lips. 

Then  came  their  own  hour  of  trial  when  the 
war  with  the  Boers  revealed  their  unexpected 
weakness,  and  they  lookt  to  us  confidently  for 
a  return  of  the  sympathy  which  they  had  shown 
during  the  Cuban  struggle.  They  were  disap 
pointed  that  the  manifestations  of  this  sympathy 
were  not  more  abundant;  and  they  would  have 
been  greatly  grieved  had  they  suspected  how 
strongly  public  opinion  in  the  United  States  held 
their  case  to  be  contaminated  by  the  private  greed 
of  a  gang  of  unscrupulous  speculators.  That 
they  did  not  suspect  this  was  evident  to  all  Ameri 
cans  who  happened  to  be  in  England  at  the  time, — 
and  more  especially  to  those  who  chanced  to  hear 
one  verse  of  a  topical  song  in  a  London  theater, 
in  which  the  singer  confidently  asserted  that  if 
John  Bull  found  any  long  difficulty  in  dealing 
with  the  Boers,  Yankee  Doodle  would  gladly 
come  over  and  lend  him  a  helping  hand.  Added 
evidence  of  their  fraternal  cordiality  could  be 

101 


UBLOOD   IS  THICKER  THAN  WATER" 

found  also  in  the  fact  that  at  one  of  the  music- 
halls  the  men  in  khaki,  whose  evolutions  formed 
part  of  a  patriotic  spectacle,  paraded  under  two 
flags,  the  union-jack  and  the  stars-and-stripes. 

Altho  there  is  one  street  in  New  York  so 
thickly  crowded  with  the  agencies  of  British  in 
surance  companies  that  it  has  been  nicknamed 
the  ''English  Channel,"  nevertheless  the  flag  of 
the  Empire  is  seldom  seen  in  the  United  States, 
whereas  the  flag  of  the  Union  is  frequently  flung 
to  the  breeze  in  Great  Britain.  Every  visitor 
to  London  of  late  years  must  have  remarkt  the 
frequency  of  the  houses  in  Regent  Street  flying 
the  star-spangled  banner.  Some  of  these  flags 
float  over  British  shops  seeking  the  trade  of 
American  travelers;  and  some  of  them  are  signs 
of  the  "American  invasion"  and  serve  to  draw 
attention  to  the  fact  that  the  wares  vended  beneath 
them  are  made  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  There 
is  scarcely  a  block  in  all  the  length  of  Regent 
Street  in  which  there  is  not  at  least  one  shop  for 
the  sale  of  American  goods,  silverware  and  shoes, 
typewriters  and  sewing-machines,  dress-patterns 
and  phonographs. 

Perhaps  it  was  this  American  invasion,  per 
haps  it  was  the  internal  weakness  disclosed  by 
the  stress  of  the  Boer  war,  perhaps  there  were 
other  reasons  of  all  sorts, — but  whatever  the  cause, 
there  was  then  to  be  observed  a  breach  in  the 
102 


"BLOOD  is  THICKER  THAN  WATER" 

stolid  and  imperturbable  self-sufficiency  of  the 
British,  and  an  unforeseen  and  unprecedented 
willingness  to  wonder  whether  there  were  not 
leaks  in  the  ship  of  state  and  rifts  in  the  social 
organism.  The  British  started  in  to  take  stock 
of  themselves,  doubting  and  anxious.  They  were 
eager  to  prove  to  themselves  and  to  others  that 
they  had  not  really  fallen  behind  in  the  march  of 
progress.  It  was  at  this  time  that  an  old  friend 
of  mine  in  London,  a  tory  of  the  strictest  sect, 
insisted  on  showing  me  over  an  electric-light 
plant  in  which  he  had  an  interest.  He  lookt  at 
me  curiously  when  he  said,  "I  don't  believe  you 
have  anything  better  than  that  in  the  States?" 
And  I  was  too  ignorant  of  such  things  to  answer 
him;  but  I  felt  sure  that  ten  years  earlier  it  would 
not  have  entered  his  head  to  suggest  the  possi 
bility  that  anything  British  could  be  inferior  to 
anything  American. 

The  founding  of  the  Rhodes  scholarships 
revealed  a  survival  of  the  belated  belief  that  Ox 
ford  alone  possesses  the  secret  of  learning,  but  the 
sending  of  the  Moseley  Commission  to  this  coun 
try  was  the  result  of  the  new  British  doubt 
whether  all  was  for  the  best  in  their  educational 
condition.  Nothing  could  be  more  agreeable 
to  an  American  than  the  tone  of  the  report  of 
that  Commission,  for  it  was  the  proper  tone  of 
one  strong  man  speaking  of  another  strong  man, 
103 


whom  he  respects  and  from  whom  he  may  fairly 
hope  to  learn  something  of  profit  to  himself. 

The  only  certain  basis  for  cordiality  is  respect 
and  understanding;  and  here  we  Americans  are 
more  fortunate  than  our  British  cousins.  How 
ever  much  we  may  at  times  misjudge  them,  at 
least  we  know  them  far  better  than  they  know  us. 
We  know  them  better,  because  we  have  always 
been  in  the  habit  of  reading  their  books,  and 
they  have  not  even  yet  acquired  the  habit  of 
reading  ours.  It  may  be  that  they  are  not  greatly 
to  be  censured  for  this,  since  it  is  comparatively 
recently  that  we  have  begun  to  write  many 
books  which  were  worth  while  for  a  foreigner  to 
read.  But  if  it  was  not  their  fault,  it  is  at  least 
their  misfortune,  that  they  do  not  know  us  thru 
our  authors  as  we  know  them  thru  theirs.  It 
is  one  of  the  prime  functions  of  fiction  to  explain 
the  nations  of  the  world  to  one  another;  and  a 
countless  host  of  uninspired  novelists  have  set 
before  us  clearly  every  British  characteristic,  re 
corded  with  serene  honesty,  so  that  we  Americans 
have  only  ourselves  to  blame  if  we  fail  to  profit 
by  the  opportunity  to  see  the  British  as  they  see 
themselves. 

Our  own  life  has  not  yet  been  set  forth  with 

the  same  abundance,  altho  of  late  a  beginning 

has  been  made.     From  lack  of  interest  in  us  or 

because,    naturally    enough,    they    preferred    to 

104 


read  about  themselves,  the  British  have  shown 
as  yet  no  great  relish  for  the  more  truthful  tales 
in  which  the  every-day  life  of  the  American  people 
is  faithfully  mirrored.  Their  taste  has  been  taken 
rather  by  the  more  highly  colored  stories  which 
depict  the  humorous  eccentricities  of  frontier- 
life  and  by  the  more  exciting  romances  which  deal 
emotionally  with  the  exceptionally  violent  phases 
of  our  civilization.  In  the  years  that  are  coming 
they  may  learn  to  appreciate  the  more  delicate 
portrayal  of  the  commonplaces  of  existence  over 
here — the  commonplaces  which  reveal  the  aver 
age  man  as  he  is  naturally  and  normally.  And 
it  is  this  average  man,  natural  and  normal,  whom 
it  behooves  the  foreigner  to  get  acquainted  with, 
if  he  wishes  to  be  in  a  position  to  understand 
us. 

There  are  signs  that  the  British  are  slowly 
enlarging  their  acquaintance  with  contemporary 
American  fiction,  and  that  they  are  opening  their 
eyes  to  other  aspects  of  American  literature, 
altho  the  old  attitude  of  lordly  condescension 
and  of  complacent  ignorance  is  still  to  be  observed 
only  too  often  in  the  pages  of  their  literary  reviews. 
Certainly  they  were  hearty  enough  in  their  in 
stant  appreciation  of  the  lasting  value  of  Captain 
Mahan's  analysis  of  the  'Influence  of  Sea-Power'; 
and  they  recognized  promptly  the  significance  of 
the  fact  that  this  explanation  of  the  source  of 


"BLOOD  is  THICKER  THAN  WATER" 

British  strength  was  due  to  the  acuteness  of  an 
American.  The  old  insular  self-sufficiency  is 
yielding  to  a  growing  consciousness  of  the  worth 
of  American  historical  investigators.  It  was  a 
departure  from  their  former  practice  when  an 
American  scholar  was  asked  to  discuss  the  In 
quisition  in  one  of  the  volumes  of  the  Cambridge 
History;  but  it  was  an  even  franker  acknowledg 
ment  of  the  solidarity  of  scholarship  when  an 
American  was  invited  to  prepare  one  of  a  British 
series  of  twelve  volumes  narrating  the  history  of 
England  itself,  and  when  another  American  was 
requested  to  contribute  the  chapters  on  the  War 
of  1812  for  a  composite  'History  of  the  British 
Navy.' 

To  record  these  instances  of  appreciation  is 
to  make  clear  that  the  British  have  at  last  aban 
doned  the  attitude  of  intolerant  isolation,  which 
once  upon  a  time  permitted  them  to  reprint 
Everett's  translation  of  Buttmann's  '  Greek  Gram 
mar'  with  a  careful  omission  of  the  "Mass." 
which  followed  "Cambridge"  at  the  end  of  the 
American  translator's  preface.  It  is  true,  how 
ever,  that  it  is  not  yet  twenty  years  since  a  New 
York  man  of  letters,  who  was  askt  by  a  leading 
London  publisher  to  suggest  American  books 
which  it  would  be  profitable  to  reprint  in  London, 
called  attention  to  Professor  Lounsbury's  'His 
tory  of  the  English  Language,'  a  work  which 
106 


"  BLOOD   IS  THICKER  THAN   WATER" 

combines  solid  scholarship  and  vigorous  com 
mon  sense;  and  the  London  publisher  himself 
was  delighted  with  the  book, — but  his  literary 
advisers  at  home  dissuaded  him  from  importing 
it,  on  the  ground  that  the  British  public  would 
not  accept  an  American  history  of  the  English 
language.  That  these  literary  advisers  then  mis 
judged  the  British  public,  or  that  the  British  pub 
lic  has  now  relaxt  its  prejudices,  would  seem  to 
be  shown  by  the  wide  sale  of  an  American  diction 
ary  of  the  English  language  recently  distributed 
in  Great  Britain  by  the  aid  of  the  London 
Times. 

Not  only  do  the  British  fail  to  profit  by  the 
opportunity  of  understanding  us,  which  lies 
ready  to  their  hands  in  the  American  branch  of 
English  literature,  but  they  also  fail  to  perceive 
the  real  facts  of  our  political  condition.  And 
here  the  fault  is  not  theirs,  but  ours.  We  are  al 
together  too  fond  of  the  "  literature  of  exposure," 
as  it  has  been  aptly  termed.  There  is  a  curious 
contradiction  in  the  American  character  which 
permits  us  to  be  unfailingly  optimistic,  altho  at 
the  same  time  we  delight  in  painting  ourselves 
a  more  uniform  black  than  would  be  becoming 
even  to  a  nation  of  devils.  Of  course,  we  ourselves 
discount  the  startling  revelations  of  this  literature 
of  exposure;  but  we  have  no  right  to  be  surprized 
or  aggrieved  that  foreigners  are  inclined  to  ac- 
107 


"BLOOD  is  THICKER  THAN  WATER" 

cept  it  at  its  face  value.  We  know  that  our  po 
litical  institutions  do  not  work  badly  on  the  whole, 
and  that  the  only  serious  breakdown  has  been  in 
the  government  of  our  cities.  But  we  are  wont 
to  talk  against  our  politicians  as  tho  they  were 
all  alike;  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  transatlantic 
critics  fail  to  find  any  good  in  any  part  of  our 
government.  Herein  our  practice  is  diametric 
ally  opposed  to  that  of  the  British,  who  are  prone 
to  minimize  their  scandals  and  prompt  to  hush 
them  up.  Altho  this  may  deceive  them  into 
thinking  themselves  better  than  other  peoples, 
it  tends  to  deceive  others  also. 

In  this  respect,  more  especially,  do  we  owe  an 
inestimable  debt  to  Mr.  Bryce,  who  has  provided 
the  British  with  a  clear  analysis  of  our  political 
machinery.  The  more  respectful  manner  in 
which  the  British  now  discuss  political  move 
ments  in  the  United  States  is  probably  due  in 
great  part  to  the  information  placed  at  their  com 
mand  by  Mr.  Bryce,  altho  it  may  be  ascribed  also 
in  some  measure  to  the  discovery, — made  by  the 
Tories  and  by  the  Liberal-Unionists  at  the  time 
when  Gladstone  brought  in  his  Home-Rule  Bill, 
—that  the  written  constitution  of  the  United 
States  is  really  more  conservative  and  less  liable 
to  sudden  and  violent  change  than  the  unwritten 
constitution  of  the  United  Kingdom.  It  may  be 
due  possibly  also  to  a  growing  perception,-— which 
108 


"  BLOOD  IS  THICKER   THAN  WATER" 

we  find  Matthew  Arnold  attaining  after  he  had 
lived  among  us  for  a  while,— that  the  institutions 
of  the  American  people  really  fit  them,  whereas 
the  institutions  of  the  British  people  are  many  of 
them  outworn  survivals  now  no  longer  adjusted 
to  existing  conditions. 

With  increasing  friendliness  has  come  increas 
ing  interest;  and  with  increasing  interest  will 
come  increasing  knowledge.  Friendliness,  in 
terest,  knowledge,— these  are  the  three  strands 
out  of  which  the  bonds  of  a  more  perfect  under 
standing  must  be  twisted.  The  interest  of  each 
people  in  the  other  is  now  fairly  equal,  but  knowl 
edge  is  more  abundant  in  the  United  States  than 
in  Great  Britain,  and  friendliness  is  more  evident 
in  Great  Britain  than  in  the  United  States.  Good 
feeling  will  grow  here  in  America,  no  doubt,  now 
that  the  temper  of  our  kin  across  the  sea  has  be 
come  more  cordial.  We  shall  recognize  the  com 
forting  fact  that  the  attitude  of  the  British  has 
changed  for  the  better  and  once  for  all.  Per 
haps  the  day  will  not  long  be  delayed  when  they 
will  recognize  the  fact  that  the  historian  of  the 
English  people  was  right  when  he  declared  a 
score  of  years  ago  that  the  headship  of  the  peoples 
who  have  the  English  language  as  their  common 
possession  is  no  longer  with  the  inhabitants  of 
the  island  where  the  stock  developt  its  speech 
and  affirmed  its  character,  but  has  past  now  to 
109 


"BLOOD  is  THICKER  THAN  WATER" 

the  newer  and  larger  land  which  cherishes  kin 
dred  ideals,  and  which  already  possesses  a  popu 
lation  outnumbering  that  of  the  mother-country 
two  to  one. 

(1905.) 


no 


THE  SCREAM  OF  THE  SPREAD- 
EAGLE 


THE  SCREAM  OF  THE  SPREAD-EAGLE 

WHEN    Joseph   Rodman   Drake   wrote   his 
impassioned  lyric  on  the  'American  Flag' 
he  ended  it  with  this  resonant  outburst: 

And  fixt  as  yonder  orb  divine, 

That  saw  thy  bannered  blaze  unfurled, 

Shall  thy  proud  stars  resplendent  shine, 
The  guard  and  glory  of  the  world. 

But  his  friend,  Fitz-Greene  Halleck,  proposed 
instead  four  lines  of  his  own  authorship,  which 
the  younger  poet  accepted  in  place  of  his  original 
draft: 

Forever  float  that  standard  sheet! 

Where  breathes  the  foe  but  falls  before  us? 
With  Freedom's  soil  beneath  our  feet, 

And  Freedom's  banner  streaming  o'er  us? 

Drake's  modesty  was  unfortunate;  his  own 
quatrain  is  far  finer  than  his  friend's,  with  its 
magniloquent  mendacity.  The  poem  was  written 
in  1819,  only  six  years  after  the  British  had  burnt 
the  Capitol  at  Washington.  With  the  disgraceful 
routs  not  infrequent  in  the  wretched  war  of  1812 
"3 


THE   SCREAM   OF  THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

yet  fresh  in  the  memory  of  men,  there  was  crass 
stupidity  in  the  sonorous  inquiry  : 

"Where  breathes  the  foe  but  falls  before  us?" 

Perhaps  the  explanation  for  Halleck's  forced 
boastfulness  may  be  found  in  the  fact  that  his 
Americanism  was  too  recent  not  to  be  perfervid, 
since  his  father  is  said  to  have  been  a  tory  con 
tractor  during  the  Revolution.  Possibly,  how 
ever,  this  vainglory  was  not  personal  to  the  poet 
but  characteristic  of  the  American  people  at  that 
period.  Students  of  our  history  are  surprized 
at  the  extraordinary  outflowering  of  national 
conceit,  which  revealed  itself  all  over  the  United 
States  in  the  first  third  of  the  nineteenth  century 
—a  conceit  almost  inconceivable  to-day,  since  it 
seemed  to  be  based  not  on  actual  accomplish 
ment,  but  almost  altogether  on  a  magnificent  be 
lief  in  the  future.  This  conceit  and  this  boast- 
fulness  were  not  without  curious  inconsistencies; 
— for  one,  the  celebration  of  the  battle  of  Bunker 
Hill  as  tho  it  had  been  an  actual  triumph  of  our 
arms;  and  for  another,  the  adoption  of  a  national 
lyric,  which  commemorated  a  trying  episode  of 
an  invasion  of  our  soil.  In  those  remote  days 
of  the  republic  when  increasing  responsibility 
had  not  sobered  its  youthful  self-assertion,  tall 
talk  was  abundant.  Often  and  boldly  did  the 
eagle  soar  into  the  blue  empyrean,  screaming 
114 


THE  SCREAM  OF  THE  SPREAD-EAGLE 

shrilly  as  it  rose  on  high.  These  ancestors  of 
ours,  four  score  years  ago,  may  have  quoted 
with  delight  Scott's  inquiry: 

Breathes  there  a  man  with  soul  so  dead 
Who  never  to  himself  hath  said, 
This  is  my  own,  my  native  land? 

But  they  failed  to  put  the  proper  emphasis  on 
"to  himself  hath  said."  They  were  not  speaking 
to  themselves;  they  were  talking  out  loud;  and 
they  wanted  to  let  the  whole  world  know  that  they 
were  citizens  of  no  mean  city. 

If  we  consider  it  a  little  more  carefully,  we 
may  find  that  this  attitude  was  not  due  solely  to 
exuberance  of  youthful  brag;  it  was  not  mere 
vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit,  signifying  nothing. 
It  may  seem  characteristic  of  these  youthful 
states  in  those  early  days,  but  it  is  not  without 
analogs  among  other  peoples  and  at  other  periods. 
It  has  a  certain  similarity  to  Hugo's  high-flown 
hymns  of  praise  to  Paris,  as  the  city  of  eternal 
illumination  and  as  the  seething  brain  of  all 
Europe.  However  inferior  in  expression,  it  is 
not  without  its  likeness  to  Shakspere's  superb 
eulogy  of  his  own  island: 

This  royal  throne  of  kings,  this  scepterd  isle, 
This  earth  of  majesty,  this  seat  of  Mars, 
This  other  Eden,  demi-paradise. 
This  fortress  built  by  nature  for  herself 

"5 


THE   SCREAM   OF  THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

Against  infection  and  the  hand  of  war, 
This  happy  breed  of  men,  this  little  world, 
This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea. 

It  might  even  be  likened  to  that  long  pean  to 
the  glory  of  Rome,  which  reechoes  from  page  to 
page  in  Livy's  history  of  the  city  by  the  Tiber. 
And  it  has  its  points  of  similarity  to  the  praise  of 
Italy  in  Vergil's  'Georgics,'  which  Ronsard  imi 
tated  with  freedom  in  his  'Hymn  to  France.' 
Our  self-satisfaction  may  have  been  more  flagrant 
and  more  flamboyant;  it  may  even  have  been 
less  obviously  justified;  but  it  did  not  differ  in 
kind  from  that  which  we  can  find  at  one  time  or 
another  in  men  of  every  other  race. 

This  habit  of  self-assertive  boastfulness  is 
both  primitive  and  puerile.  Primitive  it  is  be 
yond  all  question,  and  we  find  it  flourishing  in 
the  remotest  past.  Primeval  humanity  was  wont 
to  vaunt  its  own  daring  feats  unhesitatingly  and 
unceasingly.  The  truly  bold  man  was  a  brag 
gart,  even  if  the  coward  was  also  a  boaster.  The 
stalwart  warriors  of  the  Norse  legends  were 
abundant  and  blatant  in  laudation  of  their  own 
exploits.  The  Homeric  heroes  vied  with  one 
another  in  self-praise,  just  as  the  Pawnee,  in 
Cooper's  story,  tied  to  the  stake,  insulted  his  foes 
with  the  list  of  the  many  Sioux  whose  scalps  he 
had  taken.  In  the  later  middle  ages  the  feudal 
chiefs  were  only  a  little  less  ready  to  bedeck  them- 
116 


THE  SCREAM  OF  THE  SPREAD-EAGLE 

selves  with  laurel;  and  they  listened  gladly  to 
the  hireling  minstrel  whose  copious  chant  re 
counted  their  mighty  deeds.  Puerile  this  habit 
is  also,  or  at  least  boyish.  The  youth  of  our  own 
time  indulge  in  it,  even  when  they  are  attaining 
almost  the  full  stature  of  a  man.  Consider  the 
taunting  lyrics  which  hurtle  to  and  fro  across 
the  football  field,  the  partisans  of  each  college 
rhythmically  asserting  its  own  certainty  of  vic 
tory, — even  when  the  sturdy  young  players 
themselves  may  feel  that  they  are  but  a  forlorn 
hope.  Bring  back  to  mind  the  rattling  stanzas 
in  which  the  young  graduate  promises  that  his 
future  son  shall  follow  in  his  own  footsteps  and 
aid  in  vanquishing  the  eight  or  the  nine  or  the 
eleven  of  the  rival  institution  of  learning, — "as 
his  daddy  used  to  do." 

Yet  if  this  habit  of  self-laudation  has  endured 
thru  the  ages,  we  may  rest  assured  that  there  is 
a  good  reason  for  it,  and  that  it  has  a  utility  of 
its  own.  It  must  serve  a  purpose  of  some  sort, 
or  it  would  have  died  out  long  ago.  And  this 
utility  suggests  itself,  when  we  note  that,  nowa 
days  at  least,  the  boastfulness  is  no  longer  strictly 
personal.  It  is  mainly  collective;  it  is  to  be  as 
cribed  not  to  the  individual,  but  to  the  group  of 
which  the  individual  is  a  member.  If  we  ex 
amine  these  undergraduate  lyrics  we  discover 
at  once  that  the  college  youths  are  not  really 
117 


THE   SCREAM   OF   THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

praising  themselves;  they  are  only  vociferating 
their  loyalty  to  the  institution  they  love.  Altho 
they  brag  bravely  enough  when  they  are  assembled 
together,  they  would  be  ashamed,  one  and  all, 
to  make  any  exaggerated  claim  each  for  himself 
as  a  separate  person.  Apparently  the  habit  of 
boastfulness  is  a  survival  of  an  early  clan-instinct, 
probably  wholesome  once  upon  a  time,  and  possi 
bly  even  necessary  to  nerve  every  member  of  the 
tribe  to  conflict  and  to  encourage  him  to  make 
the  utmost  effort  for  the  martial  success  on  which 
the  existence  of  the  group  depended.  Brag  was 
a  real  stimulus  of  loyalty  and  devotion  and  self- 
sacrifice.  It  supplied  the  needful  excitement  of 
patriotic  ecstasy.  Diodorus  tells  us  that  when  the 
Gauls  accept  battle  "they  sing  the  feats  of  their 
ancestors  and  celebrate  their  own  valor,"  seeking 
to  insult  and  humiliate  their  opponent  and  to 
"  diminish  the  courage  of  his  heart  by  their  words." 
To-day  we  observe  it  as  the  survival  of  an  in 
stinct,  which  aided  self-preservation  and  which 
as  first  personal  has  now  become  communal.  Ad 
vancing  civilization  has  made  modesty  about  his 
own  accomplishments  the  distinguishing  mark 
of  a  gentleman;  but  it  has  not  yet  succeeded  in 
getting  this  principle  accepted  by  the  group  as  it 
has  been  accepted  by  the  individual.  Sister 
colleges  and  rival  cities  and  competing  nations 
still  keep  up  this  outworn  custom,  however  prim- 
118 


THE   SCREAM   OF  THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

itive  and  however  puerile  the  more  enlightened 
may  know  it  to  be. 

To  many  of  us  this  habit  of  vaunting  our  own 
valor  and  all  our  other  virtues  seems  like  a  sur 
vival  of  the  unfittest.  It  is  a  relic  of  savagery, 
like  the  custom  of  wearing  rings  in  the  ears,  al 
ready  abandoned  by  most  men  and  by  many 
women.  It  is  pitiful  and  it  is  foolish,  like  the 
Chinese  device  of  painting  on  their  shields  dread 
ful  dragons  and  other  awe-inspiring  monsters, 
in  the  belief  that  this  will  strike  fear  into  the  souls 
of  their  enemies.  But  there  is  something  to  be 
said  on  the  other  side; — if  you  persist  in  asserting 
that  you  have  a  certain  quality,  you  are,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  more  likely  to  acquire  it,  and  also 
more  likely  to  make  others  believe  that  you  pos 
sess  it.  The  method  of  achieving  these  results 
may  be  distasteful  to  many  of  us;  yet  the  results 
are  achieved  somehow  and  they  are  worth  achiev 
ing.  It  is  an  interesting  topic  of  speculation 
how  far  what  we  know  as  spread-eagleism  in  the 
United  States — and  whatever  are  the  equivalents 
of  spread-eagleism  in  other  nations — may  be 
a  necessary  accompaniment  of  patriotism.  Just 
as  there  are  souls  who  cannot  get  religion  without 
shouting,  so  there  are  true  patriots  whose  fervor 
thirsts  for  the  waving  of  "Old  Glory,"  who  fight 
all  the  better  for  the  belief  that  one  Englishman 
is  as  good  as  three  Frenchmen,  and  who  are 
119 


THE   SCREAM   OF   THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

moved  to  self-devotion  by  the  assertion  that  Paris 
is  the  lighthouse  of  civilization.  ''Antiquity 
held  that  to  be  a  vice,  which  Christianity  has  ele 
vated  into  a  virtue  under  the  name  of  humility," 
so  Renan  asserted;  and,  perhaps,  in  this  respect 
as  in  others  we  moderns  are  not  quite  so  Christian 
as  we  profess  to  be. 

The  man  who  is  speaking  for  Buncombe  may 
be  violent  and  he  may  be  absurd  without  being 
insincere.  And  if  his  turgid  oratory  really  is  a 
stimulus  to  patriotic  fervor,  then  is  his  high-flown 
rhetoric  not  in  vain.  One  of  the  shrewdest  of 
contemporary  French  critics,  M.  Emile  Faguet, 
not  long  ago  dwelt  on  the  duty  of  persuading  a 
nation  "to  love  itself,  deeply,  warmly,  energet 
ically.  The  cult  of  himself  is  not  to  be  recom 
mended  to  any  individual;  but  to  a  people  the 
cult  of  itself  must  be  presented  as  a  duty.  Even 
if  patriotism  was  not  a  duty,  it  would  be  a  ne 
cessity,  so  long  as  there  are  -  other  countries 
wherein  it  has  not  gone  out  of  fashion."  Belief 
in  the  brotherhood  of  man,  in  the  solidarity  of 
humanity,  is  likely  to  be  more  and  more  potent 
in  the  immediate  future;  it  is  certain  to  soften 
the  asperities  of  international  intercourse;  but 
it  must  not  be  allowed  to  weaken  our  devotion 
to  our  own  national  ideal  or  our  confidence  that 
we  have  a  mission  not  entrusted  to  other  peoples. 

The  dislike  which  the  Jew  of  old  had  for  the 

I2O 


THE   SCREAM  OF  THE  SPREAD-EAGLE 

Gentile,  and  which  the  Greek  had  for  the  bar 
barian,  was  a  source  of  strength  to  the  Hebrew 
people  and  to  the  Greek  race.  The  Roman  had  a 
kindred  feeling  of  hostile  contempt  toward  all 
who  were  not  citizens  of  the  great  republic;  and 
this  belief  did  its  share  in  making  the  legions  irre 
sistible.  Even  after  the  empire  had  been  built 
on  the  ruin  of  the  republic  and  after  the  Latins 
had  long  been  borrowing  the  philosophy  of  the 
Greeks,  there  was  widespread  distaste  for  the 
doctrine  of  the  brotherhood  of  humanity,  when 
Seneca  declared  it  in  the  reign  of  Nero.  It 
seemed  to  many  of  the  most  enlightened  men  of 
those  days  to  be  a  new-fangled  theory,  pernicious 
and  quite  contrary  to  the  old  Roman  tradition. 
Here  we  may  see  a  survival  of  an  earlier  senti 
ment,  when  every  stranger  was  by  that  fact  an 
enemy.  The  same  feeling  lingers  even  now  in 
the  nooks  and  corners  of  Europe.  It  finds  ex 
pression  in  the  anecdote  of  the  British  lout,  be 
holding  a  man  he  had  never  seen  before  and 
promptly  proposing  to  "'eave  'arf  a  brick  at 
'im."  Perhaps  there  may  be  a  faint  echo  of  this 
self-righteous  attitude  even  in  the  noble  'Re 
cessional'  of  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling, — or  at  least 
in  a  single  stanza  of  it: 

If,  drunk  with  sight  of  power,  we  loose 

Wild  tongues  that  have  not  Thee  in  awe — 
Such  boastings  as  the  Gentiles  use, 
121 


THE   SCREAM   OF   THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

Or  lesser  breeds  without  the  Law- 
Lord  God  of  Hosts,  be  with  us  yet, 
Lest  we  forget— lest  we  forget! 

In  the  harmless  banter  now  bandied  to  and 
fro  between  the  chief  cities  of  the  United  States, 
New  York  taking  pleasure  in  projecting  sar 
casms  on  Boston  and  Philadelphia  and  Chicago, 
and  these  cities  promptly  returning  every  merry 
missile  on  the  volley, — in  this  interchange  of 
humorous  chaff,  we  can  find  proof  of  the  ameliora 
tion  of  modern  manners,  since  these  bloodless 
duels  are  the  analogs  of  the  bitter  rivalries  of  old 
which  used  to  result  in  deadly  conflicts,  long  pro 
tracted  and  often  renewed.  The  cities  of  medi 
eval  Italy  not  only  praised  themselves  incessantly, 
but  they  were  also  prolific  in  abuse  of  all  rival 
communities.  Even  to-day  the  American  vis 
itor  may  be  astonished,  as  he  is  amused,  to  dis 
cover  that  the  Sienese  still  keep  alive  a  keen  sense 
of  injury  for  the  insults  proffered  and  for  the  in 
iquities  performed  by  the  Florentines  five  cen 
turies  ago. 

Time  was  when  the  attitude  of  every  people 
toward  every  other  people,  and  more  especially 
toward  its  own  particular  rival,  was  not  only 
hostile  but  also  suspicious.  They  were  ever 
ready  to  believe  the  worst  that  might  be  said 
against  those  whom  they  hated;  and  they  be 
lieved  this  without  any  evidence,  or  even  against 
122 


THE  SCREAM  OF  THE  SPREAD-EAGLE 

all  evidence.  The  Trojans  feared  the  Greeks 
even  bearing  gifts.  The  Romans  had  no  con 
fidence  in  the  good  faith  of  the  Carthaginians, — 
altho  we  have  now  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the 
Latins  were  really  any  more  scrupulous  or  any 
more  conscientious  than  their  African  enemies. 
The  French  in  the  last  century  were  loud  in  the 
denunciation  of  the  perfidy  of  Albion,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  the  British  pride  themselves  more 
particularly  on  their  straightforward  plain- 
dealing.  The  British  themselves  hold  the  Rus 
sians  to  be  especially  untrustworthy;  and  one 
London  politician  had  the  bad  manners  to  point 
a  remark  about  Russia  by  citing  the  adage  that 
"he  who  would  sup  with  the  devil  must  have  a 
long  spoon." 

A  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  the  British 
were  in  the  habit  of  heaping  their  hostile  con 
tempt  upon  the  Dutch,  who  had  taught  them 
agriculture  and  seamanship,  and  who  had  once 
swept  the  English  channel  with  a  broom  at  the 
masthead  of  the  flagship  of  their  fleet.  It  needs 
to  be  noted  that  the  influence  of  this  British  at 
titude  toward  Holland  can  be  detected  even  in 
the  veracious  history  of  New  Amsterdam  written 
by  the  worthy  Diedrich  Knickerbocker.  This  is 
due,  no  doubt,  to  the  fact  that  the  gentle  Irving, 
who  hated  nobody  and  who  despised  no  race, 
had  been  nourisht  on  the  British  classics  of  an 
123 


THE   SCREAM   OF   THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

earlier  generation.  Perhaps  it  is  one  of  the  more 
obvious  advantages  of  our  many  commingled 
stocks  that  this  note  of  contemptuous  hostility 
is  almost  entirely  absent  from  international  dis 
cussion  here  in  the  United  States;  and  the  same 
cause  may  be  responsible  also  for  our  compara 
tive  freedom  from  suspicion  as  to  the  motives 
and  intentions  of  our  neighbors.  And  yet  we 
may  as  well  confess  that  if  our  immediate  neigh 
bors  were  our  aggressive  rivals,  we  also  might 
fall  from  grace.  After  all,  the  wit  was  telling 
the  truth  when  he  declared  that  "  civilization  is 
the  lamb's  skin  in  which  barbarism  masquer 
ades." 

Just  as  the  Romans  used  to  express  freely  their 
low  opinion  of  Punic  faith,  so  the  French  are 
now  lavish  in  their  denunciation  of  British  hy 
pocrisy.  The  islanders  resent  this  bitterly;  and 
they  are  swift  to  deny  that  there  is  any  founda 
tion  for  the  charge.  Now  and  again,  it  is  true, 
a  Londoner  of  an  acuter  intelligence  than  his 
fellows  is  moved  to  consider  the  accusation  seri 
ously  and  to  account  for  it  as  best  he  can.  Mr. 
Bernard  Bosanquet,  for  one,  has  explained  that 
the  absence  of  logic  in  his  countrymen,  their  dis 
like  for  theory  and  their  direct  practicality  cause 
"the  English  mind  to  be  set  down,  perhaps  un 
justly,  as  both  utilitarian  and  hypocritical," 
since  "it  drives  sincerely  at  its  objects,  and  does 
124 


THE   SCREAM   OF  THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

not  care  to  give  them  a  form  in  which  they  are 
obviously  reconcilable  with  one  another.  And 
a  tissue  of  unreconciled  sincerities  has  all  the 
appearance  of  a  gigantic  hypocrisy."  These 
unreconciled  sincerities  are  abundant, — the  ap 
palling  condition  of  Piccadilly  at  night,  the  pre 
vention  of  vivisection  and  the  promotion  of  field 
sports,  (including  pigeon-shooting  with  all  its 
wanton  cruelty),  the  alliance  of  Beer  and  the 
Bible  on  which  the  Conservative  party  relies  for 
support,  the  firm  retention  of  Egypt  with  the  re 
peated  declaration  that  the  British  occupation 
is  only  temporary,  and  many  another  flagrant 
inconsistency  which  it  is  needless  now  to  catalog. 
And  if  these  irreconcilable  sincerities  so  im 
press  an  Englishman,  how  much  more  flagrant 
must  they  appear  to  a  Frenchman,  governed 
by  logic  and  insisting  upon  a  consistent  social 
organization.  The  French  may  be  excused  for 
considering  this  "tissue  of  irreconcilable  sinceri 
ties"  to  be  hypocrisy,  pure  and  simple,  made 
even  more  offensive  by  the  imperturbable  as 
sumption  that  the  British  rule  their  conduct 
according  to  a  loftier  standard  than  any  other 
people.  And  this  French  distrust  is  the  price 
the  British  are  called  upon  to  pay  for  their  boast 
ing.  If  they  were  not  puft  up  with  pride  be 
cause  of  their  belief  in  their  own  superior  morality, 
perhaps  that  virtue  might  not  be  under  suspicion. 
I25 


THE  SCREAM   OF  THE  SPREAD-EAGLE 

The  roar  of  the  British  lion  when  it  is  vaunting 
its  virtue,  is  no  more  grateful  to  alien  ears  than 
the  scream  of  the  American  eagle  or  than  the 
crowing  of  the  Gallic  cock.  Probably  it  was 
some  chance  echo  of  this  roar  which  moved  Sir 
Leslie  Stephen  to  declare  that  he  hated  "all 
patriotic  sentiments;  they  mean  vulgar  brag." 

Perhaps  we  Americans,  having  a  more  inti 
mate  acquaintance  with  our  kin  across  the  sea 
than  is  possest  by  their  former  foes  across  the 
channel,  are  able  to  reconcile  some  of  their  in 
sincerities.  We  cannot  deny  the  evidence,  but 
we  can  understand  the  explanation  which  de 
prives  the  facts  of  some  part  of  the  weight  they 
seem  to  carry.  It  may  be  that  the  British  are 
not  altogether  wrong  in  thinking  that  their  moral 
standard  is  really  higher  than  that  of  some  other 
races,  even  if  there  yawns  a  wide  gap  between 
their  preaching  and  their  practice.  It  is  probable, 
after  all,  that  they  really  know  themselves  better 
than  any  foreigner  can  know  them;  and  it  is 
even  possible  that  their  self-praise  is  not  alto 
gether  misplaced.  "I  believe  that  the  opinion 
a  man  has  of  himself  (if  he  be  accustomed  to  self- 
analysis)  is  of  more  worth  than  that  of  all  the 
rest  of  the  world";  and  what  Lowell  said  of  a 
man,  may  very  well  be  true  also  of  a  nation. 

Of  course,  it  would  be  absurd  to  maintain  that 
the  British  are  accustomed  to  "self -analysis." 
126 


THE   SCREAM   OF   THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

Nor  do  they  relish  it  when  it  is  attempted  by  a 
critic  as  keen  as  Matthew  Arnold,  who  tried  in 
vain  to  force  them  to  gaze  on  their  own  image 
in  his  highly  polished  mirror.  Even  now  they 
might  find  profit  in  weighing  the  words  of  wisdom 
scattered  thru  the  disinterested  studies  of  com 
petent  observers  from  abroad.  As  we  Americans 
took  to  heart  certain  of  the  warnings  contained 
in  Tocqueville's  'Democracy  in  America/  and 
in  Mr.  Bryce's  'American  Commonwealth,'  so 
the  British  might  have  considered  more  carefully 
Emerson's  'English  Traits'  and  Taine's  'Notes 
on  England.'  It  was  an  Englishman,  John 
Stuart  Mill,  who  said  that  "even  the  pleasure  of 
self-appreciation,  in  the  great  majority,  is  mainly 
dependent  upon  the  opinion  of  others";  and  he 
added  there  is  not  "to  most  men  any  proof  so 
demonstrative  of  their  own  virtue  or  talent  as 
that  people  in  general  seem  to  believe  in  it." 

But  people  in  general  are  moved  to  doubt  when 
we  dwell  complacently  on  our  own  virtues  or 
when  we  proclaim  our  own  talents  vociferously. 
What  the  Lion  or  the  Eagle  insists  on  shouting 
thru  the  megaphone  fails  to  carry  conviction  to 
the  listening  foreigner;  and  it  is  by  the  reverber 
ating  assertions  of  the  loud-voiced  that  the  na 
tions  of  the  earth  are  tempted  to  judge  one  another, 
since  the  speech  of  the  wiser  among  us  is  never 
shrill.  Unfortunately  for  every  nation,  those 
127 


THE  SCREAM  OF  THE  SPREAD-EAGLE 

who  have  the  full  knowledge  needful  for  a  just 
valuation  of  its  merits  and  its  demerits  rarely 
possess  also  the  equally  necessary  disinterested 
ness,  while  those  who  may  have  the  proper  de 
tachment  of  mind  are  likely  to  lack  adequate 
information.  Now  and  again  a  man  of  insight, 
who  has  traveled  in  many  lands  and  who  has 
kept  his  mind  open  as  well  as  his  eyes,  is  able 
to  make  comparisons  of  national  characteristics, 
instructive  to  the  people  of  both  countries.  Rob 
ert  Louis  Stevenson,  for  example,  started  in  life 
with  the  advantage  of  being  a  Scot  and  of  having 
his  full  share  of  the  shrewdness  of  that  stock. 
So  keenly  did  he  feel  the  need  for  a  better  under 
standing  between  nations  that  he  once  humor 
ously  suggested  a  law  requiring  "the  people  of 
one  country  to  be  educated  in  another." 

In  the  same  letter  he  tried  to  set  up  in  parallel 
columns  the  virtues  and  the  vices  of  the  English 
and  the  French,  asserting  that  they  "made  a 
balance."  Here  is  his  little  table: 

THE  ENGLISH  THE  FRENCH 

Hypocrisy.  Free  from  hypocrisy. 

Good  stout  reliable  friends.  Incapable  of  friendship. 

Dishonest  to  the  root.  Fairly  honest. 

Fairly  decent  to  women.  Rather  indecent  to  women. 

He  added  the  comment  that  "the  Americans 
hold  the  English  faults,  dishonesty  and  hypocrisy, 
perhaps  not  as  strongly,  but  still  to  the  exclusion 
128 


THE   SCREAM   OF  THE  SPREAD-EAGLE 

of  others.  It  is  strange  that  such  defects  should 
be  so  hard  to  eradicate  after  a  century  of  separ 
ation." 

Stevenson,  as  it  happened,  was  well  fitted  for 
an  international  comparison  like  this.  If  other 
observers  of  other  nationalities,  equally  well 
equipt  and  equally  disinterested,  were  to  act  on 
this  hint  of  his  and  were  to  attempt  to  draw  up 
a  balance-sheet  of  the  virtues  and  vices  of  all  the 
chief  races,  the  result  might  be  as  valuable  as  it 
would  be  interesting.  Probably  it  would  be  very 
surprizing  also,  since  the  total  number  of  good 
points  awarded  to  each  of  the  leading  peoples 
would  certainly  be  found  to  vary  far  less  than 
would  be  anticipated  by  any  one  who  had  not 
given  thought  to  the'problem,  but  who  had  held 
carelessly  the  common  conviction  that  his  own 
race  was  unquestionably  foremost  in  all  the 
qualities  which  are  needed  to  make  a  nation 
great. 

It  would  be  possible  to  make  out  a  list  of  ten 
qualities — since  the  decimal  system  is  one  of  the 
most  useful  of  modern  tools, — which  a  race 
must  possess  in  some  measure  if  it  aspires  to  a 
high  place  among  civilized  states.  Any  one  at 
tempting  such  a  list  would  be  forced  to  set  down 
Physical  Courage,  first  of  all,  since  it  is  most 
obviously  indispensable  to  independent  national 
existence.  Next  might  come  three  allied  quali- 
129 


THE   SCREAM   OF   THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

ties  also  essential  to  a  prolonged  national  life, 
—Patriotism  (which  must  include  loyalty  and 
the  faculty  of  co-operation),  Self -sacrifice,  and 
Justice  (which  must  include  the  respect  for  law). 
After  these  there  might  be  set  down  another 
group  of  three,  not  so  closely  allied  and  on  the 
whole  perhaps  not  quite  so  important, — Honesty, 
Energy  and  Intelligence.  And  to  make  up  the 
ten,  three  more  would  have  to  be  added,— 
Thoroness,  Tenacity  and  Sympathy.  This  list 
pretends  to  no  scientific  precision;  and  the 
qualities  included  may  not  have  each  of  them 
the  fittest  name.  Determination,  for  example, 
might  be  a  better  word  than  Tenacity;  and 
Toleration  might  be  substituted  for  Sympathy. 

It  may  well  be  that  these  are  not  really  the  ten 
essential  qualities  of  a  great  people  and  that  a 
more  satisfactory  list  could  be  drawn  up  without 
difficulty  by  some  one  else  better  fitted  for  the 
task.  But  it  will  serve  as  a  suggestion, — which 
is  its  sole  purpose.  And  then  the  further  sug 
gestion  may  be  advanced  that  the  chief  peoples 
of  our  Western  civilization  are  the  Austro-Hun- 
garians,  the  British,  the  French,  the  Germans, 
the  Italians,  the  Russians,  the  Scandinavians, 
the  Spaniards,  the  Swiss,  and  the  inhabitants  of 
these  United  States.  The  arrangement  is  alpha 
betical;  and  the  list  itself  is  only  tentative.  It  is 
open  to  obvious  objection;  and  yet  it  may  possi- 
130 


THE   SCREAM   OF  THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

bly  be  as  serviceable  as  any  other.  It  gives  us 
ten  peoples  or  races  or  states,  as  the  case  may 
be;  and  we  have  already  a  list  of  ten  qualities 
or  characteristics  highly  important  to  any  nation. 
Let  us  then  go  one  step  further  and  suggest  a 
marking  system  under  which  ten  is  the  maximum 
number  of  points  to  be  assigned  to  any  one 
quality. 

Now,  if  we  could  find  a  disinterested  and  well 
equipt  citizen  of  each  of  these  ten  states,  if  we 
could  get  him  to  accept  this  list  of  ten  qualities 
needed  by  every  race,  and  then  if  we  could  per 
suade  him  to  assign  to  every  state,  including  his 
own,  the  exact  mark  which  he  thought  this  state 
was  entitled  to  receive  for  its  share  of  every  one 
of  these  qualities,— if  we  could  do  this,  the  re 
sulting  table  would  be  curious,  to  say  the  least. 
And  it  would  be  very  instructive  also,  containing 
not  a  few  surprizes  for  most  of  us.  With  ten 
observers  and  ten  qualities  and  with  ten  as  the 
maximum  for  any  single  quality,  the  total  number 
of  points  attainable  by  each  of  the  ten  peoples 
would  be  one  thousand.  But  we  may  guess  that 
no  total  would  exceed  perhaps  seven  hundred 
and  that  none  would  fall  below  six  hundred.  In 
other  words,  there  would  be  no  very  great  di 
vergence  between  the  nation  which  received  the 
most  points  and  that  which  received  the  fewest. 

And  one  reason  for  this  is  plain.    However 


THE   SCREAM   OF   THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

well  equipt  the  observers  might  be  and  however 
disinterested,  no  one  of  them  could  be  expected 
to  overcome  his  native  bias  absolutely.  Every 
one  of  them  would  tend  to  overmark  his  own 
state, — and  even  to  overmark  also  the  states 
which  had  similar  characteristics  to  his  own. 
We  may  be  pretty  certain  that  the  Latins  would 
each  of  them  more  or  less  over-reward  their 
fellow-Latins,  and  that  the  Teutons  would  in 
like  manner  assign  points  a  little  too  liberally 
to  their  fellow-Teutons.  But  the  Latins  would 
probably  undermark  the  most  of  the  Northern 
peoples;  and  the  Teutons  would  undermark  the 
most  of  the  Southern  races.  Thus  there  would 
be  approximate  justice,  one  personal  equation 
tending  to  correct  the  other.  And  however  dis 
satisfied  we  might  be  with  the  total  number  of 
marks  assigned  to  us,  and  with  our  position  com 
pared  with  each  of  the  other  states,  there  would 
be  profit  in  our  discovering  what  competent 
and  unprejudiced  observers  chosen  from  nine 
other  peoples  had  decided  to  be  our  virtues  and 
our  vices.  Our  virtues  can  take  care  of  them 
selves,  and  perhaps  the  less  we  dwell  on  them 
the  better.  But  our  vices  had  best  be  made 
known  to  us  as  soon  as  possible,  that  we  may 
overcome  them  if  we  can.  The  struggle  itself 
will  be  helpful,  even  if  Renan  was  right  in  assert 
ing  that  "every  nation  of  us  goes  thru  history 
132 


THE   SCREAM   OF   THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

carrying  with  it  some  essential  vice  which  must 
destroy  it  at  last." 

Just  as  we  should  probably  be  surprized  to  see 
how  little  the  totals  would  vary  (however  differ 
ently  each  of  them  might  be  made  up),  so  we 
should  certainly  be  astonisht  to  find  an  almost 
absolute  equality  between  the  states  as  regards 
one  of  the  qualities, — and  that  the  very  quality 
upon  the  possession  of  which  every  people  plumes 
itself  most  particularly.  This  quality  is  Physical 
Courage;  and  it  is  pride  in  this  which  led  the 
American  bard  to  ask  "Where  breathes  the  foe 
but  falls  before  us?" — which  made  the  British 
historian  boast  about  "the  thin  red  line," — and 
which  has  tempted  the  French  to  quote  frequently 
the  Italian  praise  of  their  onslaught — la  juria 
jrancese.  The  instinctive  feeling  that  this  one 
quality  is  absolutely  essential  to  national  existence 
and  that  a  race  without  Physical  Courage  is 
doomed  to  lose  its  independence  and  almost  its 
individuality,  has  led  every  people  to  set  this  in 
the  forefront  of  its  national  virtues.  Yet  the 
possession  of  Physical  Courage  by  a  nation  is 
like  the  possession  of  two  legs  and  two  arms  by 
a  man;  it  is  to  be  taken  for  granted;  it  is  nothing 
to  brag  about.  Every  people  must  have  it  or 
they  cease  to  be  a  nation.  Without  it  they  sink 
swiftly  to  the  sad  condition  of  the  lowly  dwellers 
in  the  Valley  of  the  Nile,  down-trodden  tillers 
133 


THE   SCREAM   OF   THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

of  the  scanty  soil  for  scores  of  centuries,  ever 
ruled  by  aggressive  aliens  of  more  stalwart  stocks. 

Whenever  Physical  Courage  begins  to  be  un 
common,  then  the  career  of  the  nation  is  nearing 
its  end.  Tacitus  recorded  a  saying  of  his  time, 
that  only  those  Roman  troops  were  really  good 
who  were  not  Roman;  and  this  might  have  made 
it  clear  to  him  that  the  days  of  the  Empire  were 
already  numbered.  The  barbarians  were  even 
then  making  ready  to  break  in  and  to  capture  the 
Capitol.  And  it  is  well  also  to  remember  that 
civilization  has  no  monopoly  of  mere  bravery. 
Indeed,  the  disregard  of  death  is  often  a  character 
istic  of  the  lower  races.  The  bard  of  the  British 
Empire  recognized  this  amply  when  he  wrote 
"  Here's  to  you,  Fuzzy- Wuzzy;  you're  a  first-rate 
fighting  man!" 

Just  as  every  people  must  have  Physical  Cour 
age  in  a  high  degree  as  a  condition  precedent  to 
independent  existence,  so  it  must  also  have  a  full 
assortment  and  a  fair  proportion  of  every  other 
of  the  ten  needful  qualities.  The  very  fact  that  a 
nation  survives  is  evidence  enough  that  it  pos 
sesses  a  sufficient  share  of  these  qualities,  since 
without  them  it  would  have  been  crowded  aside 
and  crusht  down.  This  is  another  reason  why 
the  totals  awarded  to  each  of  the  ten  chief  peoples 
by  an  international  tribunal  of  disinterested  ex 
perts  would  not  greatly  vary.  This  is  a  reason 


THE   SCREAM  OF  THE   SPREAD-EAGLE 

also  why  every  disinterested  expert  is  likely  to 
indulge  in  a  smile  whenever  there  falls  on  his 
ears  the  roar  of  the  Lion,  the  crow  of  the  Cock,  or 
the  scream  of  the  Eagle. 

(1906.) 


135 


AMERICAN   MANNERS 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 

EVERY  one  who  is  interested  in  observing 
the  workings  of  human  nature  must  have 
noted  with  amusement  the  fact  that  the  several 
nations  are  swift  to  resent  any  criticism  of  their 
manners  and  customs  when  this  is  proffered  by  a 
foreigner,  altho  they  listen  without  anger  to  an 
animadversion  far  more  stringent  when  this  is 
made  by  a  native.  But  a  little  reflection  supplies 
at  once  an  easy  explanation  of  this  apparent  in 
consistency.  What  the  stranger  may  say  against 
us  we  resent  sharply,  because  we  are  inclined  to 
believe  him  too  ignorant  to  have  a  right  to  an 
opinion  about  us,  whereas  we  cannot  help  cred 
iting  one  of  ourselves  with  a  knowledge  of  all 
the  extenuating  circumstances  which  mitigate 
the  severity  of  his  adverse  judgment.  Further 
more,  whenever  a  man  from  another  country  says  / 
anything  we  do  not  like,  we  are  inclined  to  assume 
that  his  motive  is  envy,  or  contempt,  or  at  least 
hostility  of  some  sort;  but  we  find  it  possible 
to  believe  in  the  good-will  of  a  fellow-citizen  even 
if  he  insists  on  picking  out  the  darkest  spots  ij 
our  national  life. 

It  is  not  whose  ox  is  gored  that  makes  the  differ 
ence,   but   rather   whose   bull   does   the   goring. 
139 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 

Here,  for  example,  is  a  very  vigorously  exprest 
opinion  of  England  as  it  was  in  1870: — "a  com 
munity  where  political  forms,  from  the  monarchy 
down  to  the  popular  chamber,  are  mainly  hol 
low  shams  disguising  the  coarser  supremacy  of 
wealth,  where  religion  is  mainly  official  and 
political  and  is  ever  too  ready  to  dissever  itself 
alike  from  the  spirit  of  justice,  the  spirit  of  char 
ity,  and  the  spirit  of  truth,  and  where  literature 
does  not  as  a  rule  permit  itself  to  discuss  serious 
subjects  frankly  and  worthily, — a  community, 
in  short,  where  the  great  aim  of  all  classes  and 
orders  with  power  is  by  dint  of  rigorous  silence, 
fast  shutting  of  the  eyes  and  stern  stopping  of 
the  ears,  somehow  to  keep  the  social  pyramid 
on  its  apex,  with  the  fatal  result  of  preserving 
for  England  its  glorious  fame  as  a  paradise  for 
the  well-to-do,  a  purgatory  for  the  able,  and  a 
hell  for  the  poor." 

Now  if  this  had  been  penned  and  publisht 
by  a  Frenchman  of  distinction  or  by  an  American 
of  prominence,  the  British  would  have  waxt 
indignant  and  they  would  have  denounced  the 
calumniator,  bidding  him  to  look  to  himself  and 
to  open  his  eyes  to  the  condition  of  his  own 
country.  But,  as  it  happened,  this  scathing  in 
dictment  of  their  whole  social  organization  evoked 
no  shrill  protest  in  Great  Britain  because  the 
man  who  wrote  it  was  an  Englishman  of  distinc- 
140 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 

tion  and  of  prominence,  Mr.  John  Morley,  a 
future  cabinet-minister  and  a  future  biographer 
of  the  most  popular  of  prime-ministers.  Indeed, 
the  narrator  of  Gladstone's  career  could  have 
found  a  warrant  for  this  cutting  analysis  of  insular 
civilization  in  a  letter  of  Gladstone  himself, — 
a  letter  in  which  he  asserted  that  "the  English 
race  (I  am  a  pure  Scotchman  myself)  are  a  great 
fact  in  the  world,  and  I  believe  will  so  continue; 
but  no  race  stands  in  greater  need  of  discipline 
in  every  form,  and,  among  other  forms,  that  which 
is  administered  by  criticism  vigorously  directed 
to  canvassing  their  character  and  claims."  And 
then  Gladstone  softened  a  little  and  added  that, 
"under  such  discipline  I  believe  they  are  capable 
of  a  great  elevation  and  of  high  performance." 

Here  Gladstone  revealed  his  statesmanlike 
insight.  Every  race  stands  in  constant  need  of 
criticism.  As  it  will  crossly  dismiss  the  criticism 
of  foreigners,  however  acute  and  however  valid, 
there  is  a  more  imperative  duty  imposed  on  its 
own  members,  to  criticize  themselves,  and  to 
keep  on  pointing  out  the  symptoms  of  ill-health 
in  the  body  politic.  Altho  it  may  be  congenial 
to  a  few  spirits  ever  out  of  sympathy  with  their 
environment,  the  task  is  not  grateful,  but  it  is 
useful,  and  it  may  even  be  necessary.  In  the 
recently  publisht  correspondence  of  Taine, 
there  is  a  letter  (written  to  Albert  Sorel  in  the 
141 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 

darkest  days  of  the  black  year,  1870,  when  France 
was  at  the  mercy  of  the  Germans),  in  which  the 
great  French  critic,  a  devoted  lover  of  his  native 
land,  as  these  letters  prove  in  every  page,  declares 
that  when  peace  shall  come,  it  will  be  the  duty 
of  men  like  himself  to  try  to  make  his  fellow- 
countrymen  understand  the  causes  of  their 
calamity;  it  will  be  their  duty  to  give  lectures  and 
to  write  articles,  "instructive  and  disagreeable." 

In  one  of  the  early  years  of  the  twentieth  cen 
tury  an  anonymous  Englishman,  engaged  in  busi 
ness  in  New  York,  declared  that  it  was  painful 
to  notice  the  difference  in  the  manners  of  employ 
ees  in  British  and  American  shops  and  offices; 
and  an  American  editor,  recording  this  declara 
tion,  asserted  that  all  Americans  notice  this  differ 
ence  when  they  return  from  abroad.  One  of  these 
home-coming  travelers  voiced  his  opinion  in  a 
letter  to  a  newspaper,  in  which  he  inquired 
plaintively:  "What  ails  the  manners  of  New 
York?"  Then  he  ventured  the  startling  declara 
tion,  that,  when  he  came  home  to  the  city  of  his 
birth  after  an  absence  of  ten  years  in  Europe,  he 
found  here  "a  people  compared  to  whom  the 
Berserkers  were  Chesterfields  and  the  Tatars  a 
race  of  Talleyrands." 

This  last  alliterative  sentence  is  perhaps  not  so 
completely  annihilating  as  its  author  intended 
when  he  polisht  it  up,  since  the  public  morality 
142 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 

and  the  private  morals  of  Talleyrand  and  of 
Chesterfield  do  not  commend  themselves  as 
worthy  models  for  American  imitation,  whereas 
there  was  a  hearty  manliness  about  the  Berserkers 
and  the  Tatars,  a  masterful  directness  which 
healthy  Americans  cannot  fail  to  appreciate. 
But  however  unfortunate  the  phrase,  there  is 
no  mistaking  the  intention  of  the  writer,  and  his 
desire  to  denounce  the  social  atrocities  of  his 
native  city.  And  altho  the  bulk  of  this  denuncia 
tion  is  launcht  more  specifically  against  New 
York  and  the  New  Yorkers,  there  is  a  willing 
ness  on  the  part  of  most  of  the  denouncers  to 
enlarge  their  target  to  include  the  whole  United 
States  and  all  the  inhabitants  thereof. 

In  many  cases  the  accusation  insists  that  our 
manners  are  much  worse  than  they  used  to  be, 
and  that  we  have  fallen  from  the  high  standard 
transmitted  to  us  by  the  last  generation,  or  by 
some  generation  preceding  that.  Now  here,  if 
nowhere  else,  it  is  easy  to  make  a  stand  and  re 
pulse  the  groundless  charge.  There  is  no  basis 
whatever  for  any  belief  that  our  manners  have 
ever  been  any  better  than  they  are  now.  Or  at 
least  there  has  never  been  a  time  when  our  man 
ners  were  not  being  assailed,  and  when  the  asser 
tion  was  not  frequent  that  they  were  steadily  de 
generating.  It  is  with  our  manners  as  it  is  with 
our  servants— every  age  shrilly  expresses  its  dis- 
143 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 

satisfaction  with  those  it  knows  best.  When 
Adam,  in  'As  You  Like  It,'  proffered  his  savings 
to  his  young  master,  Orlando  lookt  back  re 
gretfully  to  a  period  when  such  conduct  was  not 
uncommon : 

O  good  old  man,  how  well  in  thee  appears 
The  constant  service  of  the  antique  world, 
When  service  sweat  for  duty,  not  for  meed! 
Thou  art  not  for  the  fashion  of  these  times, 
Where  none  will  sweat  but  for  promotion. 

Shakspere  wrote  these  lines  more  than  three 
centuries  ago;  and  the  sentiment  exprest  in 
them  echoes  to-day  in  many  an  essay  on  the  serv 
ant  question.  So  it  is  more  than  half  a  century 
now  that  Lowell  put  on  paper  the  remark  of  one 
of  the  older  inhabitants  of  Cambridge,  who  was 
something  of  a  Jeremiah  in  his  octogenarian 
vigor,  to  the  effect  that  "My  children  say,  'Yes, 
sir,'  and  'No,  sir';  my  grandchildren,  'Yes'  and 
'No';  and  I  am  every  day  expecting  to  hear 
'Blank  your  eyes!'  for  an  answer  when  I  ask  a 
service  of  my  great-grandchildren.  Why,  sir, 
I  can  remember  when  more  respect  was  paid 
to  Governor  Hancock's  lackey  at  commencement 
than  the  Governor  and  all  his  suite  get  now!" 

Perhaps  the  worthy  old  gentleman,  born   in 

the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century,  would 

not  have  found  it  easy  to  answer  a  question  or  two 

as  to  why  Governor  Hancock  should  have  a  lackey, 

144 


AMERICAN   MANNERS 

and  as  to  why  any  special  respect  should  be  paid 
to  this  lackey.  What  seemed  to  the  octogenarian 
as  a  loss  of  manners  might  be  explained  as  a  gain 
in  manliness.  But  the  evidence  is  abundant  that 
from  the  very  beginning,  from  July  4,  1776, 
American  manners  have  been  sadly  unsatis 
factory  to  American  conservatives  as  well  as  to 
the  most  of  such  foreigners  as  rashly  adventured 
themselves  amongst  us. 

Mrs.  Trollope,  Captain  Marryat  and  Charles 
Dickens  have  left  us  the  record  of  their  impres 
sions;  and  their  record  is  fatal  to  any  belief  that 
there  has  been  deterioration  of  late  years.  How 
ever  bad  our  manners  may  be  now,  they  cannot 
be  worse  than  they  were  when  these  three  lower- 
middle-class  British  novelists  were  shockt  by 
our  lack  of  repose  and  distinction.  There  is 
some  consolation  to  be  found  for  our  sad  estate 
in  taking  down  Tuckerman's  book  on  'America 
and  Her  Commentators,'  as  instructive  as  it  is 
amusing;  and  in  assuring  ourselves  by  a  perusal 
of  its  pages  that  we  are  at  least  no  worse  now  than 
foreigners  found  us  in  the  earlier  decades  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 

It  is  in  that  unforgetable  essay  of  Lowell's  *  On 
a  Certain  Condescension  in  Foreigners' — which 
was  written  just  after  the  close  of  the  Civil  War, 
and  which  might  well  be  required  as  the  basis 
of  an  examination-paper  from  every  wandering 
145 


AMERICAN   MANNERS 

Briton  and  Gaul  and  Teuton  who  proposes  to 
survey  us  from  a  car-window,  as  a  preparation 
for  a  book  about  us— it  is  in  this  paper  of  Lowell's 
that  we  find  the  best  summary  of  the  attitude  of 
the  ordinary  European  traveler  toward  America 
and  the  Americans : 

"But  whatever  we  might  do  or  leave  undone, 
we  were  not  genteel,  and  it  was  uncomfortable 
to  be  continually  reminded  that  tho  we  should 
boast  that  we  were  the  Great  West  till  we  were 
black  in  the  face,  it  did  not  bring  us  an  inch 
nearer  to  the  world's  West  End.  That  sacred 
inclosure  of  respectability  was  tabooed  to  us. 
The  Holy  Alliance  did  not  inscribe  us  on  its 
visiting-list.  The  Old  World  of  wigs  and  orders 
and  liveries  would  shop  with  us;  but  we  must 
ring  at  the  area-bell,  and  not  venture  to  awaken 
the  more  august  clamors  of  the  knocker.  Our 
manners,  it  must  be  granted,  had  none  of  those 
graces  that  stamp  the  caste  of  Vere  de  Vere,  in 
whatever  museum  of  British  antiquities  they  may 
be  hidden.  In  short,  we  were  vulgar." 

It  is  this  ingrained  European  belief  that  we  are 
not  genteel,  that  we  are  vulgar,  which  underlies 
Matthew  Arnold's  complaint  that  Americans 
lack  distinction,  and  which  sustains  the  detes 
tation  so  shrilly  exprest  by  Ruskin— who  was 
himself  the  son  of  a  liquor-dealer,  and  who  was 
wholly  devoid  of  the  self-restraint  and  the  ur- 
146 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 

banity  which  have  been  held  to  mark  the  con 
duct  of  a  true  gentleman.  It  is  this  belief  that  in 
spired  Kenan's  fear  that  the  Americanizing  of 
the  modern  world  might  mean  the  vulgarizing 
of  that  world.  A  belief  so  widely  held  must  have 
some  justification;  and  it  is  wholesome  for  us  to 
ask  ourselves  now  and  again  what  this  justifica 
tion  may  be.  Are  foreigners  right  or  wrong, 
when  they  express  their  dread  of  our  influence? 
In  their  eyes,  our  manners  are  bad;  and  in  the  eyes 
also  of  many  Americans  who  have  been  to  Europe 
and  who  have  lingered  there  fascinated  by  the 
indubitable  charm  of  an  Old  World  civilization. 
Are  our  manners  in  America  really  as  vile  as 
they  seem  to  these  observers  contrasting  them 
with  the  standards  of  Europe? 

The  question  is  not  easy  to  answer;  but  we 
may  be  helpt  to  a  solution  by  remembering 
that  the  standard  of  Europe — in  so  far  as  there 
is  any  uniformity  over  there — is  not  final,  and 
that  it  is  the  result  of  feudal  tradition.  It  is  a 
codification  of  the  practices  of  countries  still  con 
serving  the  habits  of  an  aristocratic  social  organ 
ization  and  still  governed  by  the  idea  of  caste, 
stanchly  rejecting  the  theory  of  democracy,  and 
absolutely  hostile  to  any  practical  application  of 
the  idea  of  human  equality.  When  the  English 
man  engaged  in  business  in  New  York  complained 
of  the  absence  of  civility  in  America,  perhaps 
147 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 

what  he  really  meant  was  that  he  found  here 
a  lack  of  the  servility  which  is  customary  in  Eng 
land  and  which  seems  to  most  Americans  un 
manly  and  detestable. 

The  Englishman  who  has  money  expects  to 
find  his  inferiors  cringing  before  him;  and  in 
his  own  country  his  expectation  is  rarely  disap 
pointed.  When  he  happens  to  come  over  here, 
he  fails  to  find  it  and  he  misses  it.  Even  when 
he  is  devoid  of  haughtiness  and  when  he  tries 
to  be  condescending,  he  does  not  elicit  the  re 
sponse  he  has  expected.  The  explanation  is  to 
be  found  in  the  fact  that  whether  he  intends  it  or 
not,  he  assumes  the  attitude  of  a  superior;  and 
this  is  something  that  the  ordinary  American  re 
sents  instantly  and  righteously.  It  was  a  queen, 
Carmen  Sylva,  who  declared  that  "princes  are 
brought  up  to  be  affable  to  every  man;  and  every 
man  should  be  brought  up  like  a  prince."  But 
until  every  man  is  brought  up  like  a  prince,  affa 
bility  may  take  on  the  less  agreeable  disguise  of 
condescension;  and,  as  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
shrewdly  remarkt,  "the  pleasures  of  condescen 
sion  are  strangely  one-sided." 

American  social  usages  may  differ  from  Eu 
ropean  without  in  reality  being  inferior,  how 
ever  vociferously  the  Europeanized  Americans 
assert  this  inferiority.  Especially  different  is 
the  relation  of  master  and  servant,  and  that  of 
148 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 

buyer  and  seller  in  a  shop.  As  to  this  latter, 
the  British  assumption  seems  to  be  that  by  his 
mere  possession  of  money  to  spend  the  purchaser 
is  raised  to  a  superior  caste  and  is  thereby  en 
titled  to  be  treated  with  flattering  adulation. 
The  American  assumption  is  that  buyer  and 
seller  are  two  equal  parties  to  a  bargain  by  which 
both  hope  to  profit,  and  that  they  meet  on  the 
level  ground  of  self-interest  and  common  cour 
tesy. 

Perhaps  actual  discourtesy  is  rather  more  com 
mon  in  London  shops  than  in  those  of  New  York. 
Possibly  Mr.  Hopkinson  Smith  went  to  an  ex 
treme  when  he  suggested  that  "if  you  go  into  an 
English  store  the  proprietor  will  take  it  for 
granted  that  you  have  come  to  crack  his  safe"; 
but  the  American  traveler  in  London  is  lucky  if 
he  has  not  been  exposed  to  the  surly  resentment 
of  a  shopkeeper  in  whose  store  he  may  have  failed 
to  make  a  purchase.  Nothing  more  surprizes 
intelligent  British  travelers  in  the  United  States, 
and  nothing  pleases  them  more,  than  the  open 
hospitality  of  American  stores  of  the  better  class, 
in  which  any  visitor  is  welcomed  and  in  which 
no  visitor  is  annoyed  by  importunities  to  become 
a  purchaser.  In  this  respect  even  the  more  im 
portant  establishments  of  Paris  are  not  yet  on 
the  plane  of  the  best  of  the  great  shops  of  our 
chief  American  cities. 

149 


AMERICAN   MANNERS 

The  more  familiar  an  impartial  observer  may 
be  with  the  social  usages  and  habits  of  Great 
Britain  and  of  the  continent  of  Europe,  the  less 
emphatic  will  be  his  feeling  that  the  foreign  stand 
ard  is  really  superior  to  the  American;  and  the 
more  inclined  he  will  be  to  explain  away  certain 
apparent  disadvantages  of  our  attitude  as  the 
price  we  pay  for  what  we  hold  in  high  esteem- 
equality  and  democracy,  manliness  and  self- 
respect.  The  fault  that  such  an  observer  will 
be  most  likely  to  find  is  not  with  the  American 
standard  of  manners  itself,  but  rather  with  our 
failure  to  attain  the  standard  that  we  accept. 

The  American  theory  of  manners,  if  one  may 
attempt  to  formulate  its  basis,  is  founded  not  on 
any  artificial  distinctions  of  social  position,  but 
on  the  simple  relation  of  man  to  man.  Under 
neath  it  lies  our  belief  in  equality  of  right  and 
in  the  accompanying  duty  of  granting  to  others, 
spontaneously  and  ungrudgingly,  all  the  rights 
that  we  claim  for  ourselves.  In  Europe,  bad 
manners,  whether  of  the  upper  or  the  lower  classes, 
generally  spring  from  a  lack  of  sympathy.  In'  > 
America,  bad  manners  are  caused  by  want  of  / 
thought;  they  are  the  result  of  carelessness  more/ 
than  of  wilfulness.  The  American  is  so  busy 
minding  his  own  business  that  he  has  no  time  to  be 
as  regardful  of  the  rights  of  others  as  he  knows 
he  ought  to  be.  He  does  not  mean  to  be  rude; 
150 


AMERICAN   MANNERS 

and  if  his  attention  is  called  to  it,  he  mends  his 
manners,  even  if  only  for  the  moment.  The 
American  is  profoundly  good-natured — and  good 
nature  is  an  integral  element  of  good  manners. 
The  carnival  gaiety  of  an  election-night  crowd 
in  any  American  city,  no  matter  how  bitter  may 
have  been  the  preceding  canvass,  finds  no  paral 
lel  in  any  other  country  in  the  world;  it  is  an 
expression  of  that  good-humored  toleration  which 
is  a  chief  characteristic  of  the  American  people 
and  which  every  intelligent  foreigner  notes  al 
most  immediately  upon  his  arrival  here. 

The  spirit  which  animates  an  American  crowd, 
the  self-restraint  and  the  self-respect  that  it  re 
veals,  will  not  be  found  in  corresponding  gather 
ings  in  the  great  cities  of  Europe.  The  feeling 
for  order,  the  respect  for  the  rights  of  others,  is 
shown  in  actions  like  our  automatic  dropping  into 
line  before  a  ticket-window,  a  result  rarely  at 
tained  in  Europe  except  under  police  supervision. 
In  the  United  States  we  believe  that  who  comes 
first  should  be  served  first,  whereas  in  Great 
Britain  only  too  often  every  man  fights  for  the 
best  place,  willing  enough  that  the  devil  should 
take  the  hindmost.  Even  when  an  American 
crowd  is  scrambling  forward  tumultuously,  in 
apparent  disregard  of  everything,  this  disregard 
is  only  apparent.  In  the  very  thick  of  the  rush 
for  the  cars  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge,  if  a  woman 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 

or  a  child  happened  to  stumble  the  crowd  would 
part  instantly  and  helping  hands  would  be  out 
stretched  on  every  side.  Even  if  a  paper  bag  of 
oranges  or  apples  broke  an  effort  would  be  made 
to  recover  them  and  to  return  them  to  the  owner. 
In  other  words,  the  American  is  not  so  intent  on 
his  own  business  that  he  cannot  be  recalled  to 
his  duty  to  his  fellows;  and  he  is  willing 
enough  to  give  practical  expression  to  his  sym 
pathy,  if  only  his  attention  can  be  aroused  for 
the  need  of  it. 

No  doubt  there  is  a  brusqueness  and  a  care 
lessness  of  others  which  we  feel  to  be  far  too  fre 
quent,  but  which  have  at  heart  no  real  discourtesy, 
or  at  least  no  intention  of  discourtesy.  A  great 
city,  with  its  thronging  thousands,  has  no  time 
for  the  minor  courtesies  of  a  less  hurried  exist 
ence;  and  we  have  no  right  to  expect  that  those 
who  rush  past  us  in  the  streets  should  give  us  the 
greeting  which  is  grateful  and  appropriate  when 
we  pass  another  party  high  up  in  the  lonely  paths 
of  the  Swiss  mountains.  Nor  have  we  any  right 
to  expect  to  find  in  a  modern  mercantile  com 
munity  the  exquisite  punctilio  which  lingers  in 
those  belated  lands  where  the  duel  is  not  yet 
disestablisht.  There  is  certain  to  be  enforced 
courtesy  wherever  a  man  must  answer  with  his 
life  for  any  casual  affront. 

In  the  territory  of  the  ready  trigger  politeness 
152 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 

is  excessive,  even  if  it  is  only  external.  In  her 
'Bits  of  Gossip'  Rebecca  Harding  Davis  has 
recorded  an  experience  of  her  father  in  the  South 
more  than  half  a  century  ago.  As  he  was  walk 
ing  thru  the  village  street  one  morning  he  ob 
served  that  a  man  was  following  him  rapidly, 
with  a  pistol  in  his  hand.  Naturally  enough  he 
started  back,  whereupon  the  man  with  the  pistol 
thanked  him  courteously,  proffering  the  simple 
explanation:  "It  is  the  gentleman  on  the  other 
side  of  the  street  that  I  wish  to  shoot."  Then 
the  trigger  was  pulled,  and  the  man  on  the  other 
side  of  the  street  fell  dead,  with  a  bullet  in  his 
heart;  and  Mrs.  Davis  adds  that  "during  the 
next  six  months  more  than  thirty  men  were  shot 
on  the  same  grassy  highway." 

"Different  times,  different  manners,"  as  the 
French  phrase  it;  and  in  giving  up  the  practice 
of  the  duello  we  have  surrendered  also  a  few  of 
the  more  elaborate  forms  of  politeness  which 
accompanied  it,  with  the  obvious  advantage  that 
our  good  manners  now,  even  if  they  are  some 
what  diminisht,  are  founded  not  on  any  fear  of 
the  fatal  consequences  of  a  lapse  from  good- 
breeding,  but  on  a  self-respect  which  is  strong 
enough  to  respect  others  also.  A  self-respect 
which  is  so  feeble  as  to  resemble  self-assertion 
is  a  constant  foe  to  easy  intercourse.  Indeed, 
self-assertion  is  one  of  the  most  offensive  aspects 


AMERICAN   MANNERS 

of  that  self-consciousness  which  needs  to  be 
curbed  and  brought  under  control  before  man 
is  fit  for  association  with  his  fellows.  And  here 
we  have  an  explanation  of  certain  of  the  less 
pleasant  peculiarities  of  American  life,  due  to  the 
presence  here  of  countless  thousands  of  foreigners, 
who  have  not  yet  risen  to  a  full  appreciation  of 
American  standards. 

Coming  from  countries  where  they  and  their 
forebears  have  been  down-trodden  for  centuries, 
these  immigrants  find  themselves  here  suddenly 
free  from  all  interference;  and  it  is  small  wonder 
that  at  first  they  do  not  know  what  to  do  with 
their  unexampled  liberty.  They  take  a  long 
breath  and  look  about  them;  and  often  they 
seem  to  believe  that  the  only  way  in  which  they 
can  attain  to  a  realizing  sense  of  their  new-found 
freedom  is  by  self-assertion.  Very  likely,  in 
deed,  this  is  a  necessary  step  in  their  recognition 
of  their  own  manhood,  however  offensive  may 
be  its  immediate  manifestations.  With  many 
this  first  step  is  taken  swiftly;  and  they  are  then 
ready  to  take  a  second  and  to  act  on  the  American 
theory  that  equality  does  not  mean  only  that  you 
are  as  good  as  the  other  man,  but  also  and  es 
pecially  that  the  other  man  is  just  as  good  as 
you  are. 

Sometimes  they  refuse  to  grasp  this,  or  are 
unable  to  understand  it  and  to  see  its  full  sig- 
154 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 

nificance.  Some  of  them  therefore  remain  in 
this  first  stage,  suspicious  and  aggressive;  but 
even  here  the  case  is  not  helpless,  for  the  children 
of  these  recalcitrants  go  to  the  common  schools 
and  are  molded  into  Americans  by  the  pressure 
of  their  school-fellows,  perhaps  more  than  by  the 
direct  guidance  of  the  teachers.  And  the  kinder 
garten  with  its  sweet  spirit  of  forbearance  and 
of  tender  yielding  must  influence  many  and  make 
them  ready  for  the  more  emphatic  training  of 
the  schools.  Then  what  the  children  learn  in 
kindergarten  and  in  school,  what  they  see  with 
their  eager  young  eyes,  what  they  hear  with  their 
eager  young  ears,  they  take  home  to  their  parents ; 
and  we  behold  the  strange  spectacle  of  the  elders 
learning  manners  from  their  own  young.  The 
process  is  slow,  no  doubt;  but  it  is  unceasing,  and 
it  is  certain  of  success  at  last. 

However  deficient  American  manners  may 
seem  to  us  in  the  minor  urbanities,  however  un 
couth  we  must  confess  them  to  be  now  and  again, 
there  is  no  reason  for  despair,  or  even  for  any 
deep  dissatisfaction.  Our  manners  are  different 
from  those  which  obtain  in  England  and  in  France; 
but  who  shall  say  that  they  are  really  inferior? 
Our  manners  are  different,  because  we  ourselves 
are  different.  We  admit  the  difference  readily 
enough,  but  never  by  any  chance  have  we  any 
temptation  to  admit  inferiority.  And  if  the  con- 
*55 


AMERICAN   MANNERS 

trast  of  American  manners  with  European  man 
ners  seems  sometimes  to  be  to  our  disadvantage, 
this  is  often  because  the  contrast  is  unfairly  made. 
The  average  American  with  all  his  casual  im 
perfections  is  set  up  beside  the  best  that  Europe 
has  to  show.  And  this  in  itself  is  a  compliment 
to  our  social  organization  and  an  evidence  of  its 
success.  As  our  society  is  not  stratified  by  caste, 
there  is  nobody  here  to  compare  with  the  Euro 
pean  gentleman  except  the  average  American. 

The  European  definition  of  a  gentleman  may 
be  based  on  birth  or  on  breeding  or  on  occupation; 
and  all  of  these  are  distinctions  external  to  the 
man  himself.  The  American  girl,  when  she  was 
told  in  England  that  "gentlemen  were  men  who 
did  not  work,"  answered  promptly  that  we  had 
men  who  did  not  work  in  America  also,  and  that 
we  called  them  tramps.  The  American  definition 
of  a  gentleman  is  not  founded  on  any  external 
test;  it  is  based  on  the  quality  of  the  man  himself, 
whatever  his  antecedents;  it  is  rooted  in  his  own 
self-respect  and  in  his  respect  for  others.  Davy 
Crockett  said  that  Andrew  Jackson  was  a  per 
fect  gentleman,  because  he  set  the  whisky-jug 
on  the  table — "and  lookt  the  other  way,"  This 
nice  feeling  for  the  feeling  of  others  is  one  ele 
ment  of  the  character  of  a  gentleman,  as  we 
recognize  it;  and  another  element  is  exprest  in 
Lowell's  assertion  that  the  Westerner  "has,  at 
156 


AMERICAN  MANNERS 


least,  that  first  quality  of  a  gentleman,  that  he 
stands  squarely  on  his  own  feet,  and  is  as  uncon 
scious  as  a  prairie." 

To  say  these  things  is  not  to  say  that  our 
manners  are  perfect  or  that  they  cannot  be  im 
proved.  No  American  who  has  ever  had  occa 
sion  to  consider  the  subject  carefully  is  likely  to 
be  at  all  boastful  on  behalf  of  his  fellow-citizens. 
Even  if  manners  in  the  great  cities  of  America 
are  not  conspicuously  inferior  to  manners  in  the 
great  cities  of  Europe,  we  ought  not  to  be  sat 
isfied,  and  we  ought  to  strive  for  a  superiority 
which  our  easier  circumstances  would  seem  to 
demand  from  us.  We  ought  to  bear  in  mind 
always  that  good  manners  are  the  small  change 
with  which  a  man  may  pay  his  way  thru  the 
world.  Even  if  our  casual  discourtesies  are  due 
not  so  much  to  innate  rudeness  as  to  thought 
less  carelessness,  there  is  all  the  more  reason  why 
we  should  take  to  heart  the  advice  contained  in 
the  letter  of  an  English  nobleman  to  his  sons : 

"Before  you  speak,  let  your  mind  be  full  of 
courtesy;  the  civility  of  the  hat,  a  kind  look,  or  a 
word  from  a  person  of  honor,  has  bought  that 
service  which  money  could  not.  And  he  that 
can  gain  or  preserve  a  friend,  and  the  opinion  of 
civility,  for  the  moving  of  the  hat,  or  a  gentle  look, 
and  will  not,  is  sillily  severe:  spare  not  to  spend 
that  which  costs  nothing;  be  liberal  of  them,  but 
157 


AMERICAN   MANNERS 

be  not  prodigal,  lest  they  become  too  cheap.  I 
remember  Sir  Francis  Bacon  calls  behavior  the 
garment  of  the  mind;  it  is  well  resembled,  and 
rightly  expresses  the  behavior  I  would  have  in 
proportion  to  a  garment.  It  must  be  fit,  plain 
and  rich,  useful  and  fashionable.  I  should  not 
have  advised  you  to  such  a  regard  of  your  outside, 
the  most  trifling  part  of  man,  did  I  not  know 
how  much  the  greatest  part  of  the  world  is  guided 
by  it,  and  what  notable  advantages  are  gained 
thereby,  even  upon  some  very  wise  men,  the  re 
quest  of  an  acceptable  person  being  seldom,  or 
at  least  unwillingly,  denied." 


158 


AMERICAN   HUMOR 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

IT  is  one  of  the  most  markt  peculiarities  of 
this  new  century  that  we  are  all  engaged  in 
an  effort  to  learn  more  about  the  rest  of  the  world. 
The  Germans  are  curious  about  the  French,  the 
French  are  trying  to  understand  the  British; 
and  we  Americans  are  striving  to  find  out  wherein 
we  differ  from  the  Europeans  in  general.  We 
want  to  see  ourselves  as  others  see  us,  and  to 
see  others  as  they  see  themselves.  We  are  spy 
ing  out  the  secrets  of  the  other  nationalities  in 
the  hope  that  we  may  learn  more  about  our  own 
essential  Americanism.  The  enterprise  is  in 
teresting  and  the  result  cannot  but  be  instructive, 
if  we  make  use  of  all  the  means  of  comparison 
which  lie  open  to  us.  And  in  this  discussion  of 
national  differences  and  of  racial  distinctions, 
perhaps  nothing  is  more  helpful  than  the  consid 
eration  of  national  and  racial  types  of  humor. 

Show  me  what  a  man  laughs  at,  and  I  will  tell 
you  what  manner  of  man  he  is.  The  deepest 
thinker,  seeking  to  solve  this  problem  of  national 
individuality,  would  profit  by  a  comparison  of 
the  comic  papers  that  flourish  in  the  several 
countries.  He  will  find  himself  possest  of  precious 
161 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

information  after  he  has  set  over  against  each  other 
the  Kladderadatsch  of  the  Germans  and  the 
Charivari  of  the  French,  the  British  Punch  or 
The  London  Charivari  and  the  American  Life 
and  Puck.  Perhaps  this  comparison  of  humor 
ous  weeklies  is  of  more  immediate  significance 
even  than  a  contrasting  of  the  great  masters  of  the 
comic,  of  the  creator  of  Falstaff  with  the  creator 
of  Tartufje,  of  the  chronicler  of  Mr.  Pickwick 
with  the  chronicler  of  Tom  Sawyer. 

But,  first  of  all,  we  must  make  again  the  need 
ful  distinction  between  two  qualities  often  con 
founded  because  we  have  no  fit  names  to  keep 
them  apart.  We  must  again  remind  ourselves 
that  humor  is  one  thing  and  quite  another  that 
precious  gift  we  have  to  call  the  sense-of-humor. 
Humor,  itself,  is  positive;  it  is  what  makes  us 
laugh.  The  sense-of-humor  is  negative;  and  by 
its  possession  we  prevent  others  from  laughing 
at  us.  The  two  gifts  are  as  separate  as  may  be; 
and  they  are  not  often  to  be  found  in  the  same 
man.  More  than  one  positive  humorist,  who  has 
moved  the  world  to  inextinguishable  mirth,  has 
not  had  the  negative  ability  which  would  restrain 
him  from  making  himself  ridiculous.  In  other 
words,  the  profest  humorist  is  sometimes  so  lack 
ing  in  the  sense-of-humor  that  he  takes  himself 
too  seriously,  as  Dickens  did  when  he  aired  in 
public  his  private  quarrel  with  the  mother  of  his 
162 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

children.  Probably  there  are  few  situations  more 
annoying  and  more  humiliating  than  that  in 
which  a  man  finds  himself  when  he  discovers  that 
he  who  has  made  his  fellows  laugh  again  and 
again  has  at  last  given  them  cause  to  laugh  at 
him,  rather  than  with  him. 

This  invaluable  sense-of-humor  is  an  individual 
possession;  it  is  in  no  ways  national  or  racial. 
This  negative  quality  can  be  found  among  the 
French  and  the  Germans,  as  well  as  among  the 
British  and  the  Americans.  But  positive  humor 
varies  from  one  language  to  another.  The 
witz  of  Berlin  could  be  born  only  on  the  banks 
of  the  Spree;  and  the  esprit  of  Paris  flourishes 
best  by  the  borders  of  the  Seine.  The  "wheeze" 
of  the  London  music-hall  may  fall  flat  in  New 
York,  just  as  the  rapid-fire  patter  of  the  American 
variety-show  may  evoke  only  a  blank  stare  in 
England.  After  all,  the  jest's  prosperity  lies  in 
the  ear  of  him  that  hears  it.  There  is  no  profit 
in  making  a  joke  that  is  not  taken;  and  no  inter 
national  clearing-house  has  yet  been  establisht 
for  exchanging  the  merry  jests  of  the  several 
peoples.  Often  a  quip  which  past  current  in 
the  land  of  its  birth  is  nailed  to  the  counter  as 
spurious  when  it  ventures  to  cross  the  sea. 

As  George  Eliot  suggested,  "a  difference  of 
taste  in  jests  is  a  great  strain  on  the  affections"; 
and  it  may  yet  happen  that  a  nation  will  see  a 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

cause  of  war  in  the  refusal  of  some  other  nation 
to  accept  its  merry  jests  at  their  face  value. 
The  English  insist  that  it  needs  a  surgical  oper 
ation  to  get  a  joke  into  the  head  of  a  Scotchman; 
but  the  Scotchman  who  happens  to  have  the 
sense-of-humor  can  retort  that  the  knife  is  needed 
only  for  an  English  joke  and  that  the  Scotch 
have  a  pawky  wit  of  their  own.  So  we  Ameri 
cans  sometimes  complain  that  the  British  are 
slow  on  the  trigger  in  their  apprehension  of 
humor;  but  it  is  only  our  American  humor  that 
the  British  are  sluggish  in  appreciating,  not  their 
own, — and  also  not  the  bolder  and  deeper  humor 
which  has  universal  currency  because  it  does  not 
bear  the  mint-mark  of  any  one  people.  A  friend 
of  mine  declares  that  explaining  a  joke  to  an  Eng 
lishman  is  like  trying  to  write  on  blotting  paper; 
but  it  is  only  a  very  American  joke  which  the 
Englishman  needs  to  have  expounded  thus  pain 
fully. 

In  every  country  where  the  inhabitants  have 
discovered  the  hygienic  value  of  laughter,  most 
of  the  merry  jests  which  amuse  them  are  local 
and  temporary;  and  only  a  few  are  universal  and 
durable  in  their  appeal  to  the  risibilities  of  man 
kind.  What  seems  to  us  funny  here  to-day 
quite  possibly  will  not  seem  funny  to  us  here  to 
morrow;  and  it  may  not  seem  funny  even  now 
to  anybody  else  anywhere  else.  Americans  are 
164 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

as  prone  to  this  ephemeral  and  evanescent  joking 
as  any  other  people;  and  we  have  no  right  to 
expect  any  other  people  to  be  amused  by  that 
which  amuses  us.  We  ought  to  reserve  our  dis 
pleasure  until  we  find  the  foreigner  unmoved  to 
mirth  by  those  finer  specimens  of  our  humor 
which  transcend  the  accidents  of  American  life 
and  attain  to  the  universality  of  abiding  human 
nature.  For  example,  we  are  fully  justified  in 
pitying  any  individual  or  any  people  who  fails 
to  see  the  fun  in  the  early  pages  of  'Tom  Sawyer' 
recording  how  that  type  of  the  eternal  boy  let 
the  contract  for  whitewashing  his  aunt's  fence. 
But  perhaps  we  have  no  right  really  to  look  down 
on  those  who  do  not  laugh  at  the  '  Jumping  Frog,' 
since  that  masterpiece  of  narrative  is  more  em 
phatically  American  in  its  method,  in  the  imper 
turbable  gravity  with  which  an  impossible  happen 
ing  is  set  forth. 

Many  of  the  best  jokes  made  by  Americans 
might  have  been  made  by  foreigners;— that  is  to 
say,  they  are  not  essentially  American;  they  have 
little  or  no  flavor  of  the  soil.  They  are  American 
specimens  of  humor  and  not  specimens  of  Ameri 
can  humor.  When  Colonel  Higginson  declared 
that  Mr.  Henry  James  was  not  a  true  cosmopolitan 
"because  a  true  cosmopolitan  is  at  home  even 
in  his  own  country,"  the  witty  remark  had  a 
point  and  a  polish  which  may  be  described  as 

165 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

French  in  its  felicity  and  which  recalls  to  mem 
ory  Voltaire's  assertion  that  the  English  hanged 
an  admiral  now  and  then  merely  "to  encourage 
the  others."  When  Mr.  Choate  described  woman 
as  "an  after-thought  and  a  side-issue,"  he  was 
uttering  a  witticism  that  might  be  attributed  to 
any  of  the  British  wits,  to  Douglas  Jerrold  or  to 
Sydney  Smith.  There  was  even  a  French  dex 
terity  in  his  answer  to  an  impertinent  question, — 
that  if  he  could  not  be  himself,  he  "would  like 
to  be  Mrs.  Choate's  second  husband."  Indeed, 
it  was  perhaps  this  Gallic  subtlety  which  was 
disconcerting  to  the  casual  Englishman  who 
happened  to  hear  the  smart  saying, — and  who 
promptly  askt,  "Ah— but  who  was  Mrs.  Choate's 
second  husband?"  And  this  recalls  the  com 
ment  of  another  Englishman  on  another  witti 
cism  made  by  an  American,  altho  not  character 
istically  American.  The  British  stranger  had 
quoted  to  him  the  clever  remark  that  "the  true 
purpose  of  the  Waldorf-Astoria  is  to  supply  ex- 
clusiveness  to  the  masses."  He  listened  solemn 
ly;  he  pondered  gravely;  and  then  a  smile  ir 
radiated  his  face,  "I  see, — ' exclusiveness  to  them 
asses!' — good,  very  good  indeed!" 

One  of  the  wittiest  of  Americans  was  the  late 
Thomas   Bailey   Aldrich,   whose   talk   was   con 
tinually  lightened  by  flashes  of  fun.     Yet  many 
of  his  cleverest  sayings  were  lacking  in  any  es- 
166 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

sential  Americanism.  When  Matthew  Arnold 
made  his  first  visit  to  America,  Aldrich  invited 
the  best  talkers  in  Boston  to  dine  with  him  and 
put  Dr.  Holmes  on  the  right  of  his  distinguished 
guest.  The  genial  autocrat  began  dilating  whim 
sically  upon  the  possibility  of  meeting  unex 
pected  people.  "What  would  you  do,"  he  askt 
at  large,  "if  you  were  to  meet  a  cannibal  on 
Beacon  Street?"  And  Aldrich  promptly  re 
sponded,  "I  think  I  should  stop  to  pick  an  ac 
quaintance."  This  was  a  merry  jest  that  might 
have  been  made  by  a  clever  Briton,  by  Sheridan 
or  by  W.  S.  Gilbert.  Again,  when  we  were  once 
chatting  about  a  certain  London  man  of  letters 
who  has  read  voluminously,  putting  abundant 
information  into  his  many  books  and  yet  not 
growing  in  wisdom  himself,  Aldrich  summed  up 
the  case  by  saying,  "he  is  like  a  gas-pipe,— no 
richer  for  all  the  illumination  it  has  conveyed." 
This  might  have  been  said  by  a  Frenchman, 
by  Voltaire  or  Beaumarchais.  Now  and  again 
Aldrich's  clever  things  had  a  suggestion  of  his 
native  land  in  their  unabasht  exaggeration. 
He  was  once  going  to  see  Lawrence  Barrett,  and 
as  he  approacht  the  theater,  he  saw  a  festoon 
of  arc-lights  suspended  over  the  entrance,  and 
his  quick  comment  was,  "I  see  Barrett  has  hung 
up  his  footlights  to  dry ! "  When  the  tax-assessors 
raised  the  valuation  of  a  country-house  he  once 


AMERICAN   HUMOR 

had  on  the  New  England  coast,  where  only  a 
thin  carpet  of  soil  covered  the  rocks,  Aldrich  de 
clared  that  if  his  tax  was  not  reduced  he  would 
"roll  up  the  place  and  carry  it  away!" 

Lowell  appreciated  this  imaginative  enlarge 
ment  of  the  mere  fact,  and  he  liked  to  think  that 
it  was  not  uncommon  in  New  England.  He 
once  quoted  the  remark  of  a  Yankee  rustic  that 
a  certain  negro  was  so  black  "that  charcoal  made 
a  chalk-mark  on  him."  In  his  own  writing 
Lowell  often  exemplified  this  same  magnifying 
power  of  overstatement  for  humorous  effect,  as 
when  he  declared  that  Carlyle  was  "forever  call 
ing  down  fire  from  heaven  when  he  couldn't 
lay  his  hand  on  the  match-box."  When  Mark 
Twain  was  staying  at  the  Bear-and-Fox  Inn  of 
the  Onteora  Club,  the  rooms  of  which  were 
divided  off  only  by  walls  of  burlap,  he  com 
plained  that  the  partitions  were  so  thin  that  he 
could  "hear  the  young  lady  in  the  next  room 
change  her  mind."  The  late  W.  R.  Travers  once 
took  the  only  vacant  place  in  a  Fifth  Avenue 
omnibus,  letting  his  son  sit  on  his  knee;  and  when 
a  pretty  girl  got  in  and  had  to  stand,  he  said, 
"J-Jack,  g-g-get  up  and  let  that  young  lady 
have  your  s-s-seat." 

An  imaginative  exaggeration,  a  trick  of  mag 
niloquent  overstatement,  is  distinctly  character 
istic  of  American  humor;  and  yet  we  can  find 
168 


AMERICAN   HUMOR 

the  same  inflated  distortion  of  the  fact  in  not  a 
few  foreigners.  The  Travers  joke  might  have 
been  made  by  Charles  Lamb,  for  example,  whose 
humor  is  often  very  American  in  its  savor,  and 
who  described  himself  "a  matter-of-lie  man." 
And  when  we  remember  that  Lamb  also  had  an 
impediment  in  his  speech,  we  almost  wonder  how 
it  was  that  the  Englishman  did  not  anticipate  the 
American's  retort  when  a  friend  met  him  after 
his  removal  to  New  York  and  told  him  that  he 
stuttered  more  than  he  had  done  in  Baltimore: — 
"New  York  is  a  b-b-bigger  place."  The  re 
mark  of  Mark  Twain  about  the  young  lady  chang 
ing  her  mind  is  similar  in  its  essential  quality  to 
a  quip  of  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan's.  At  a 
country-house  he  had  unwillingly  agreed  to  take 
an  elderly  lady  for  a  walk  and  he  was  delighted 
when  a  sudden  shower  prevented  their  going  out. 
After  the  rain  ceased,  the  lady  caught  him  sneak 
ing  thru  a  side  door.  "It  has  cleared  up,  Mr. 
Sheridan,"  she  said.  "Y-yes,"  he  responded, 
"it  has  cleared  up  enough  for  one  but  not  enough 
for  two." 

Sheridan  was  an  Irishman,  and  this  ingenious 
excuse,  for  all  its  American  flavor,  may  be  a  speci 
men  of  Hibernian  readiness.  Perhaps  this  might 
even  be  taken  as  evidence  in  behalf  of  Mr.  Taft's 
suggestion  that  the  humor  of  the  American  race 
owes  much  to  the  plentiful  infusion  of  the  Irish 
169 


AMERICAN    HUMOR 

in  our  population.  The  suggestion  is  interesting 
and  it  may  be  valid;  but  it  overlooks  the  fact  that 
Celtic  fun  is  rooted  in  melancholy,  and  flowers 
out  of  sadness,  whereas  the  American  is  more  \ 
light-hearted  and  care-free.  We  are  optimistic  • 
almost  to  the  verge  of  fatalism,  while  the  Irish 
have  ever  a  tear  near  the  smile.  Thackeray 
pointed  out  that  the  rollicking  and  boisterous 
tales  of  Lever  and  of  Lover  are  fundamentally 
sorrowful,  even  if  they  are  superficially  laughter- 
provoking.  This  is  not  true  of  American  humor 
ous  narratives,  which  may  be  grim  enough  at 
times,  but  which  are  only  infrequently  melancholy. 
There  is  no  underlying  sadness  in  the  robust  fun 
of  the  earlier  Southern  comic  story-tellers,  in 
Judge  Longstreet's  l  Georgia  Scenes,'  for  example, 
altho  there  may  be  not  a  little  of  the  crude  violence 
and  hard  coldness  of  Smollett.  There  is  scant 
melancholy  in  John  Phoenix  or  in  Artemus 
Ward,  in  Petroleum  V.  Nasby  or  in  Orpheus 
C.  Kerr,  in  Frank  R.  Stockton,  or  in  Joel  Chand 
ler  Harris.  As  for  Josh  Billings,  he  is  primarily 
a  wit  rather  than  a  humorist,  a  maker  of  maxims, 
a  follower  of  La  Rochefoucauld  rather  than  of 
Rabelais,  as  the  London  Spectator  showed  when 
it  translated  some  of  his  aphorisms  out  of  his 
misfit  orthography: — "It  is  easy  to  be  a  fool; 
many  a  man  is  a  fool  and  doesn't  know  it." 
It  is  true,  of  course,  that  there  was  a  strain  of 
170 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

sadness  in  Lincoln,  one  of  the  foremost  of  Ameri 
can  humorists  and  one  of  the  most  typical.  And 
Mark  Twain's  fun  is  sustained  by  the  deep  seri 
ousness  of  a  strong  nature,  wherein  pathos  and 
humor  are  intertwined.  His  tale  of  the  Blue  Jay, 
for  example,  has  a  pathetic  aspect,  if  we  care  so 
to  consider  it;  and  there  is  manly  emotion  firmly 
controlled  in  many  a  chapter  of  '  Huckleberry 
Finn'  and  'Pudd'nhead  Wilson.'  But,  after  all, 
pathos  is  not  melancholy;  and  Mark  Twain  has 
less  of  the  sadness  of  Lincoln  than  he  has  of  the 
unshakable  commonsense  of  Franklin.  In  the 
beginning  the  author  of  'Innocents  Abroad'  was 
a  follower  of  John  Phoenix;  and  the  account  of 
his  ascent  of  Vesuvius  is  quite  in  the  manner  of 
the  more  elementary  makers  of  comic-copy  for 
the  newspapers.  Only  after  he  had  captured  the 
ear  of  the  public  by  this  easy  fun-making  was  it 
that  Mark  Twain  found  himself  and  that  his 
genius  ripened  until  he  outgrew  absolutely  the 
journalistic  laugh-makers  with  whom  he  was 
classed  at  first.  And  then  he  revealed  at  last  the 
richness  of  his  gift,  which  now  gives  him  his  as 
sured  position  in  the  greater  group  headed  by 
Cervantes  and  by  Moliere. 

Mark    Twain's    humor    is    characteristically 
American  in  that  it  is  founded  on  good  humor. 
It  represents  a  more  advanced  stage  of  civiliza 
tion  even  than  that  of  Cervantes,  who  callously 
171 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

involved  his  noble  hero  in  unshrinking  practical 
jokes,  which  seem  to  us  now  quite  unworthy  of 
him.  In  primitive  communities  the  sense  of 
fun  is  ill-developt  and  it  is  aroused  most  easily 
by  physical  misadventure.  To  the  savage  the 
simplest  retort  is  the  swift  hurtling  of  the  stone- 
ax.  If  that  reaches  its  aim,  it  accomplishes  its 
purpose  more  satisfactorily  than  the  keenest 
epigram.  Even  now  the  uncivilized  among  us, 
who  laugh  over  the  crude  comic-supplements  of 
the  Sunday  papers,  take  delight  in  the  misfor 
tunes  of  hapless  caricatures  of  our  common 
humanity.  In  most  of  these  figures  of  fun  there 
is  really  little  American  humor,  but  only  the  un 
hesitating  brutality  of  an  earlier  stage  of  human 
progress.  Such  contorted  parodies  of  mankind 
have  no  right  to  exist  in  the  era  of  the  telephone 
and  the  electric  light  and  the  aeroplane;  they  are 
survivals  from  the  stone-age,  when  our  remote 
ancestors  had  not  yet  forgotten  the  tricks  in 
herited  from  progenitors  accustomed  to  hang 
suspended  by  their  prehensile  tails  from  the 
boughs  of  the  forest  primeval. 

American  humor,  the  humor  that  is  truly  typi 
cal  of  the  American  race,  is  not  cold-hearted, 
even  tho  it  can  be  grim  on  occasion.  Grim  it 
certainly  is,  now  and  again,  grim  in  spite  of  its 
geniality.  Consider,  for  example,  John  Hay's 
'Mystery  of  GilgaP: 

172 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

They  carved  in  a  way  that  all  admired, 
Till  Blood  drawed  iron  at  last,  and  fired. 
It  took  Seth  Bludso  'twixt  the  eyes, 
Which  caused  him  great  surprize. 

They  piled  the  stiffs  outside  the  door; 
They  made,  I  reckon,  a  cord  or  more. 
Girls  went  that  winter,  as  a  rule, 
Alone  to  spellin' -school. 

Grimness   there   is   again   in   Eugene   Field's 
'Little  Peach': 

Under  the  turf  where  the  daisies  grew 
They  planted  John  and  his  sister  Sue, 
And  their  little  souls  to  the  angels  flew, — 
Boo  hoo! 

What  of  that  peach  of  the  emerald  hue, 
Warmed  by  the  sun  and  wet  by  the  dew? 
Ah,  well,  its  mission  on  earth  is  thru. 
Adieu! 

But  the  grimness  of  American  humor  is  only  - 
occasional,  and  its  geniality  is  almost  always 
more  evident.  Indeed,  geniality  and  imaginative 
exaggeration  may  be  taken  as  the  chief  of  its 
essential  qualities.  The  latter  characteristic  can 
be  found  in  Benjamin  Franklin  almost  as  freely 
as  it  is  discoverable  in  Mark  Twain.  There  is 
the  same  playful  irony  that  we  note  in  the  '  Stolen 
White  Elephant'  to  be  seen  a  century  earlier  in 
the  letter  which  Franklin  wrote  to  a  London 
newspaper  in  1765,  gravely  declaring  that  "the 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

very  tails  of  the  American  sheep  are  so  laden  with 
wool,  that  each  has  a  little  car  or  wagon  to  sup 
port  and  keep  it  from  trailing  on  the  ground." 
It  is  in  this  same  letter  that  Franklin  commented 
on  an  assertion  which  had  appeared  in  the  Brit 
ish  newspapers  to  the  effect  that  the  Canadians 
were  making  preparations  for  the  cod  and  whale 
fishery  in  the  Upper  Lakes.  "Ignorant  people 
may  object  that  the  Upper  Lakes  are  fresh,  and 
that  cod  and  whales  are  salt-water  fish;  but  let 
them  know,  Sir,  that  cod,  like  other  fish  when 
attackt  by  their  enemies,  fly  into  any  water  where 
they  can  be  safest;  that  whales  when  they  have 
a  mind  to  eat  cod,  pursue  them  wherever  they  fly; 
and  that  the  grand  leap  of  the  whale  in  the  chase  up 
the  Falls  of  Niagara  is  esteemed,  by  all  who  have 
seen  it,  as  one  of  the  finest  spectacles  in  nature. 
Really,  Sir,  the  world  is  grown  too  incredulous." 
The  fine  gravity  in  this  logical  analysis  of  an 
arrant  impossibility,  which  we  note  here  in 
Franklin  and  again  in  Mark  Twain,  is  not  infre 
quent  in  our  humorists;  but  it  is  not  an  Ameri 
can  invention.  Its  analogs  can  be  discovered 
in  Fielding,  and  more  particularly  in  Swift,  in 
his  'Modest  Proposal'  and  in  his  defense  of 
Christianity.  And  one  might  even  replevin 
earlier  examples  from  earlier  authors  of  earlier 
languages, — from  Aristophanes,  for  instance.  In 
the  'Frogs,'  when  Bacchus  is  going  down  to 
174 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

Hades  with  his  servant  Xanthias,  they  meet  a 
dead  man  on  his  way  to  the  Styx  and  they  offer 
him  a  small  sum  to  be  the  bearer  of  their  burdens. 
But  the  dead  man  scorns  the  insignificant  fee, 
saying,  "I'd  sooner  be  alive  first!"  Yet  even 
if  there  is  here  a  Greek  anticipation  of  American 
exaggeration  and  even  if  irony  was  employed  by 
Swift  and  Fielding  very  much  as  it  has  been  em 
ployed  by  Franklin  and  Mark  Twain,  none  the 
less  must  it  be  admitted  that  this  irony  and  this 
exaggeration  are  more  common  in  American  lit 
erature  than  in  any  other;  and  they  are  more 
characteristic  of  our  brand  of  humor. 

Where  did  we  get  these  characteristics?  Not 
from  the  Irish,  whose  humor  is  of  another  quality. 
Not  from  the  Puritans,  whose  humor  has  not  sur 
vived  abundantly  enough  for  us  to  know  it  well. 
And  yet  it  may  have  been  brought  across  the 
ocean  in  the  original  package,  since  we  find 
something  not  unlike  it  in  England  in  the  spacious 
days  of  Elizabeth  and  in  the  decadent  years  of 
her  more  pedantic  successor.  There  is  a  large- 
ness  of  vision,  a  buoyancy  of  spirit,  an  abounding 
hopefulness,  a  superb  self-confidence  in  the  Eng 
land  of  the  early  seventeenth  century  which  we 
cannot  help  noting  also  in  the  America  of  the 
early  twentieth  century.  In  many  attributes 
of  his  character,  in  his  exuberant  vitality,  in  his 
attitude  toward  life,  the  modern  American  seems 
175 


AMERICAN  HUMOR 

to  be  a  little  more  closely  akin  to  the  bolder 
Elizabethan  than  is  the  modern  Englishman. 
At  least,  we  seem  to  have  preserved  rather  more 
of  the  forthputting  of  that  expansive  era,  both  in 
language  and  in  literature.  Indeed,  it  would  not 
be  difficult  to  make  out  a  suggestive  list  of  the 
points  of  resemblance  between  Ben  Jonson  and 
Mark  Twain,  for  example.  Sir  Epicure  Mammon 
in  the  'Alchemist'  is  a  figure  that  might  be  easily 
paralleled  in  the  works  of  the  most  American  of 
our  authors;  and  Meercraft,  in  the  'Devil  is  an 
Ass/  urges  plausibly  a  variety  of  fantastic  schemes 
for  making  money  quite  in  the  manner  of  Colonel 
Mulberry  Sellers.  If  less  deliberately  poetic 
than  Ben,  Mark  has  not  less  imagination  or  a  less 
vigorous  grasp  on  reality.  He  is  less  formal 
and  less  rigid;  he  is  gayer  and  more  frolicsome; 
but  he  has  the  same  sturdy  sincerity  and  the  same 
artistic  conscientiousness.  It  is  perhaps  because 
he  thus  relates  us  to  our  origins  that  Mark  Twain 
is  the  foremost  of  American  humorists. 

American  humor  is  also  good  humor,  as  we  have 
seen;  it  is  generally  genial,  even  if  it  is  sometimes 
grim;  it  is  often  ironic;  and  it  tends  toward 
imaginative  exaggeration.  The  humor  of  other 
peoples  may  reveal,  now  and  again,  one  or  an 
other  of  these  characteristics;  but  we  seem  to  hold 
the  patent  on  the  combination. 

(1908.) 

176 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

IT  happened  that  a  chance  number  of  an  im 
portant  electrical  review  came  into  the  hands 
of  a  professor  in  the  English  department  of  a 
leading  American  university  not  long  ago;  and 
one  of  the  prominent  advertisements  caught  his 
eye  at  once.  The  advertiser  vaunted  the  merits 
of  his  "  separately  excited  boosters."  The  pro 
fessor  lowered  the  paper  for  a  moment  and 
wondered  vaguely  what  manner  of  thing  a  "sep 
arately  excited  booster"  might  be.  First  of  all, 
what  was  a  booster?  Secondly,  why  should  it 
get  excited  ?  And  finally,  why  need  it  be  excited 
separately?  He  was  moved  to  ask  a  colleag  in 
the  electrical  department,  who  easily  explained 
the  meaning  of  the  puzzling  words  and  assured 
him  that  they  would  be  understood  at  once  by 
all  the  experts  engaged  in  practical  electrical  work, 
however  obscure  they  might  be  even  to  a  pro- 
fest  student  of  the  language,  ignorant  of  the  latest 
developments  in  this  special  art. 

Within   a   few   days   thereafter   the   professor 

chanced  to  hear  other  phrases  drawn  from  the 

rapidly  increasing  vocabulary  of  the  electricians. 

He  was  told  by  a  war-correspondent  who  had  re- 

179 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE   PEOPLE 

cently  been  to  the  front  with  the  Russian  army, 
that  vodka  was  a  "live-wire."  He  was  informed 
that  on  a  certain  occasion  a  lady  of  uncertain 
temper  was  "off  her  trolley."  He  listened  to  an 
indignant  friend  declaring  that  an  objectionable 
person  had  been  so  very  annoying  that  the  speaker 
was  ready  "to  throw  him  down  on  the  third  rail." 
And  then  he  recalled  the  stirring  stanza  of  the 
bard  of  the  British  Empire,  in  which  Mr.  Kipling 
declared  the  readiness  of  the  'Native  Born'  on 
the  shores  of  the  seven  seas  to  drink 

To  the  hearth  of  our  people's  people — 

To  her  well-plowed  windy  sea, 
To  the  hush  of  our  dread  high-altar 

Where  the  Abbey  makes  us  We; 
To  the  grist  of  the  slow-ground  ages, 

To  the  gain  that  is  yours  and  mine — 
To  the  Bank  of  the  Open  Credit, 

To  the  Power-house  of  the  Line! 

And  when  he  had  assembled  these  things  in 
his  memory,  the  professor  of  English  saw  their 
significance  at  last.  Here  under  his  hand  was 
new  evidence  of  the  growth  of  the  language,  of 
its  constant  expansion,  of  its  vitality  and  of  its 
health.  Here  was  proof  again  that  the  English 
language  was  abundantly  alive,  and  that  how 
ever  firmly  rooted  it  might  be  in  the  past  it  was 
forever  stretching  out  fresh  branches  for  the  future. 
Its  work  was  not  done;  and  it  was  keeping  itself 
180 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

fit  for  the  larger  duties  that  loomed  before  it. 
Being  alive  and  not  dead,  it  is  in  constant  change, 
adjusting  itself  to  the  varying  circumstances, 
continually  making  itself  ready  to  meet  the  ne 
cessities  of  the  several  peoples  that  speak  it. 

The  English  language  is  not  made;  it  is  a-mak- 
ing  now.  It  is  not  finisht  and  complete,  like 
Latin;  nor  is  it  dead,  like  Latin.  It  is  alive  and 
growing,  and  therefore  it  is  not  yet  fixt  and  de 
termined;  it  is  ever  flexible,  yielding,  resourceful, 
— as  it  has  always  been  since  its  earliest  begin 
nings.  It  is  now  the  same  tongue  that  the  great 
King  Alfred  spoke,  and  yet  it  is  not  the  same, 
for  it  has  outgrown  its  swaddling-clothes  and 
attained  to  the  full  stature  of  a  man.  It  was 
in  the  infancy  of  English  that  Alfred  achieved 
the  marvelous  literary  feat  of  creating  a  prose 
style,  a  feat  which,  so  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison 
asserts,  can  be  explained  only  "by  remembering 
that  the  language  which  Alfred  spoke  and  wrote 
was  not  exactly  early  English,  nor  middle  Eng 
lish,  much  less  the  highly  composite  and  tessel 
lated  mosaic  which  we  call  the  latest  and  con 
temporary  English.  It  was  but  the  bony  skeleton 
of  our  English,  what  the  Palatine  mount  of 
Romulus  was  to  imperial  Rome,  what  Wessex 
was  to  the  present  empire  of  the  Queen.  But 
it  was  the  bones  of  our  common  tongue;  it  was 
the  bones  with  the  marrow  in  them;  ready  to 
181 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

be  clothed  in  flesh  and  equipt  with  sinews  and 
nerves.  But  this  simple  and  unsophisticated 
tongue  the  genius  of  our  Saxon  hero  so  used  and 
molded  that  he  founded  a  prose  style,  and  taught 
the  English  race  to  trust  to  their  own  mother- 
tongue  from  the  first;  to  be  proud  of  it,  to  culti 
vate  it,  to  record  it  in  the  deeds  of  their  ancestors, 
and  to  hand  it  on  as  a  national  possession  for 
their  children." 

Alfred  seems  to  have  had  an  intuitive  knowledge 
of  the  fact  which  later  philological  science  has 
not  yet  succeeded  in  getting  generally  accepted— 
the  fact  that  every  language  is  born  on  the  lips 
of  those  who  use  it  and  that  it  lives  in  common 
speech  and  in  daily  use,  rather  than  in  grammar 
and  in  dictionary.  Language  was  spoken  long 
before  it  was  written;  and  our  noble  English  loses 
something  of  its  vivacity  and  even  of  its  vitality 
when  at  last  it  is  written  down,  when  it  is  forced 
to  make  its  appeal  to  the  eye  rather  than  to  the 
ear.  There  is  a  freshness  about  the  spoken  word 
which  the  written  word,  and  more  especially  the 
printed  word,  has  often  lost.  This  freshness  the 
real  masters  of  speech  are  forever  striving  to  re 
capture;  and  their  writings  are  direct  and  vigor 
ous  and  inviting  in  proportion  as  they  succeed  in 
this  endeavor.  It  was  Lowell,  a  scholar  of  the 
widest  reading  and  a  most  adroit  wielder  of  lit 
erary  allusion  and  illustration,  who  once  told  a 
182 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

friend  frankly  that  "boys  and  blackguards  have 
always  been  my  masters  in  language." 

Most  of  us  have  failed  to  lay  firm  hold  of  this 
principle, — that  the  spoken  word  is  primary  and 
that  the  written  word  is  secondary  only.  Failing 
to  grasp  it,  we  fail  to  see  its  consequences;  and 
we  are  likely  to  fall  into  the  common  error  of  ac 
cepting  a  grammar  as  a  code  of  rules  which  must 
be  obeyed,  and  we  are  prone  to  hold  up  a  dic 
tionary  as  a  final  authority  to  settle  all  questions 
of  usage  in  orthography  and  pronunciation.  But 
the  grammarian  has  no  warrant  to  set  up  as  a 
lawgiver;  and  he  has  no  commission  to  do  more 
than  declare  what  he  has  ascertained  as  to  the 
structure  and  the  condition  of  the  language  at 
that  special  period  of  its  changing  history  which 
he  has  undertaken  to  explain.  It  is  as  a  record 
of  facts  and  of  tendencies  that  a  grammar  is 
valuable;  and  its  value  is  diminisht  in  proportion 
as  the  grammarian  mistakes  his  office  and  risks 
himself  in  dogmatic  judgments.  And  as  a  gram 
mar  has  no  authority  in  itself,  so  also  a  diction 
ary  has  no  authority  of  its  own.  Its  value  lies 
in  the  accuracy  with  which  it  has  recorded  the 
facts.  As  a  President  of  the  Modern  Language 
Association  stated  it  plainly  a  few  years  ago,  the 
trained  scholars  look  upon  a  dictionary  simply  as 
"a  more  or  less  incomplete  list  of  the  words  and 
phrases  used  in  a  language  in  some  period  of  its 

183 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

life,  with  definitions  (often  inexact)  of  these 
words  and  phrases." 

The  dictionary,  however  ample,  however  fre 
quent  its  supplements,  must  always  remain 
"more  or  less  incomplete,"  for  the  language  keeps 
on  growing  and  expanding  and  responding  to  the 
unexpected  needs  of  those  who  use  it  even  while  the 
most  recent  supplement  is  getting  itself  into  print. 
And  there  is  need  also  to  emphasize  the  fact  that 
the  language  has  grown  and  expanded  so  abun 
dantly  that  no  dictionary-maker  has  ever  dared 
to  attempt  to  include  all  the  words  within  his 
reach.  The  special  vocabularies  of  the  several  arts 
and  sciences  are  enormously  distended;  and  only 
the  more  important  words  of  these  special  vocabu 
laries  can  be  included  even  in  the  dictionaries 
which  are  planned  to  extend  to  several  volumes. 

The  special  terms  of  the  electrician, — such  as 
" live-wire"  and  "third-rail"  and  "separately 
excited  booster," — are  recorded  only  in  part 
even  in  the  lexicons  of  that  science.  The  special 
terms  of  the  stage  and  the  theater  were  carefully 
collected  a  score  of  years  ago  by  an  expert  for 
one  of  the  foremost  of  American  dictionaries; 
and  they  proved  to  be  so  many  that  it  was  possible 
to  insert  only  the  most  significant  and  the  most 
likely  to  be  lookt  for.  These  theatrical  terms  were 
not  evanescent  slang;  they  were  the  technical 
words  used  with  absolute  exactness  by  the  thou- 
184 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

sands  of  men  and  women  connected  with  the 
stage.  Some  of  them  were  known  also  to  the 
theater-going  public,  such  as  " box-office"  and 
" return-check,"  "act-drop"  and  "stage-hands"; 
but  many  more — such  as  "sky-borders"  and 
"cut-wing,"  "bunch-lights"  and  "star-trap," 
"raking-piece"  and  "billboard-ticket" — would 
probably  not  convey  any  clear  and  definite  idea 
to  the  most  of  those  who  throng  into  the  theater. 
It  is  from  these  special  vocabularies  that  the 
language  is  constantly  enlarged  and  enricht. 
From  these  special  vocabularies,  familiar  only  to 
the  practitioner  of  the  several  arts,  certain  words 
and  terms  and  phrases  are  snatcht  up  into  gen 
eral  use.  For  a  season  they  may  be  lookt  upon 
as  intruders,  as  little  better  than  slang;  and  not 
a  few  of  them  fail  to  establish  themselves  in  time, 
unable  to  make  good  a  right  of  domicile  in  the 
select  lexicon  of  literary  usage.  But  some  of 
them  persist  and  justify  their  claims  to  acceptance 
even  by  the  fastidious.  Nothing  more  clearly 
indicates  the  taste  and  the  tact  of  an  author  than 
the  way  in  which  he  deals  with  these  novel  locu 
tions,  some  of  them  barbaric  and  to  be  rejected 
without  question,  some  of  them  needless,  and  a 
few  of  them  fresh  and  terse  and  significant.  The 
adroit  writer  cannot  do  better  than  accept  the 
advice  proffered  by  one  of  the  sagest  of  Moliere's 
characters, — Ariste,  in  the  'School  for  Husbands' 

185 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

— who  declared  that  it  is  best  to  follow  the  fashion 
slowly  in  language  as  well  as  in  clothes. 

And  another  comic  dramatist,  Ben  Jonson, 
who  often  rivals  Moliere  in  his  common  sense, 
put  the  matter  pithily  as  was  his  wont,  when  he 
asserted  that  "custom  is  the  most  certain  mistress 
of  language,  as  the  public  stamp  makes  the  cur 
rent  money.  But  we  must  not  be  too  frequent 
with  the  mint,  every  day  coming,  nor  fetch 
words  from  the  extreme  and  uttermost  ages,  since 
the  chief  virtue  of  a  style  is  perspicuity,  and  noth 
ing  so  vicious  in  it  as  to  need  an  interpreter. 
Words  borrowed  of  antiquity  do  lend  a  kind  of 
majesty  to  style,  and  are  not  without  their  delight 
sometimes.  For  they  have  the  authority  of 
years,  and  out  of  their  intermission  do  win  them 
selves  a  kind  of  grace  like  newness.  But  the 
eldest  of  the  present,  and  newest  of  the  past 
language,  is  the  best." 

The  French,  who  have  less  initiative  than  the 
twin-peoples  that  speak  English,  have  yielded 
authority  to  the  French  Academy,  founded  by 
Richelieu  to  act  as  the  guardian  and  trustee  of  the 
language.  Whenever  a  word  or  a  phrase  has 
been  past  upon  by  the  Academy  and  admitted  to 
citizenship,  then  its  validity  is  placed  beyond  all 
question.  But  there  is  no  French  dictionary, 
even  if  it  is  edited  by  a  member  of  the  Academy, 
which  does  not  include  thousands  of  locutions 
186 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

not  yet  warranted  by  the  approval  of  the  Academy 
as  a  whole.  And  there  are  few  of  the  members 
of  the  Academy  who  do  not  individually  use  un 
hesitatingly  a  host  of  words  which  they  collectively 
have  not  yet  sanctioned.  Thus  it  is  that  the 
Academy  lags  far  behind  the  best  usage  as  certi 
fied  by  its  own  members.  Thus  also  we  see  how 
futile  was  Richelieu's  effort  to  confide  the  care 
of  the  language  to  any  body  of  men  however  com 
petent  or  however  distinguisht.  No  dikes  can 
be  set  to  the  overflowing  forces  which  are  ever 
broadening  the  common  speech;  at  least,  no  arti 
ficial  embankments  are  effective  for  long.  The 
sole  restraint  must  be  sought  in  that  common 
sense,  that  tact,  and  that  taste  of  wise  writers,  in 
which  Ben  Jonson  and  Moliere  wisely  put  their 
trust. 

There  is  significance  in  the  fact  that  not  a  few 
of  the  members  of  the  French  Academy  employ 
freely  many  phrases  not  approved  by  the  august 
tribunal  to  which  they  belong.  Many  authors  of 
the  greatest  scholarly  distinction  have  delighted 
to  keep  their  talk  vigorous,  even  if  their  writing 
was  ultra-refined.  Tennyson  had  a  relish  for 
the  homely  vernacular  and  used  the  plainest 
words,  on  occasion,  finding  a  keen  delight  in  their 
unadorned  directness.  He  told  Carlyle  once  that 
if  any  man-on-horseback,  any  masterful  Duke 
William  should  appear  in  England  to  curb  per- 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

sonal  liberty,  "he'd  soon  feel  my  knife  in  his  guts." 
And  in  Professor  Peck's  biography  of  Prescott 
we  are  told  of  the  fondness  of  that  stately  and 
sonorous  historian  for  the  frank  colloquialisms 
of  his  section  and  of  his  time.  No  doubt  Prescott 
found  in  these  snatches  of  slang  a  wholesome 
corrective  for  that  eighteenth  century  grandilo 
quence  toward  which  he  was  tempted  by  his  early 
training. 

The  biographer  points  out  that  in  Prescott's 
first  book,  the  'History  of  Ferdinand  and  Isa 
bella,'  publisht  in  1837,  the  historian  "had  not 
yet  emancipated  himself  from  that  formalism 
which  had  been  inherited  from  the  eighteenth 
century  writers,  and  which  Americans,  with  the 
wonted  conservatism  of  provincials,  retained  long 
after  Englishmen  had  begun  to  write  with  natural 
ness  and  simplicity."  And  in  the  preface  to  the 
second  series  of  the  'Biglow  Papers,'  written 
thirty  years  after  Prescott's  first  history,  Lowell 
asserted  "that  the  great  vice  of  American  writing 
and  speaking"  was  a  studied  want  of  simplicity, 
that  we  were  in  danger  of  coming  to  look  on  our 
mother-tongue  "as  a  dead  language,  to  be  sought 
in  the  grammar  and  dictionary  rather  than  in 
the  heart."  Lowell  went  on  to  say  that  "it  is 
only  from  its  roots  in  the  living  generation  that  a 
language  can  be  reinforced  with  fresh  vigor  for 
its  needs;  what  may  be  called  a  literary  dialect 
188 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

grows  ever  more  and  more  pedantic  and  foreign, 
till  it  becomes  at  last  as  unfitting  a  vehicle  for  living 
thought  as  monkish  Latin."  Elsewhere  in  the 
same  introduction  Lowell  declared  that  "there 
is  death  in  the  dictionary,"  and  that  "true  vigor 
and  heartiness  of  phrase  do  not  pass  from  page 
to  page,  but  from  man  to  man,  when  the  brain  is 
kindled  and  the  lips  suppled  by  downright  living 
interests." 

After  praising  Lincoln's  "  truly  masculine 
English,  classic  because  it  was  of  no  special 
period,  and  level  at  once  to  the  highest  and  the 
lowest  of  his  countrymen,"  Lowell  voiced  his 
scorn  of  Congressional  grandiloquence.  In  the 
two  score  years  since  Lowell  wrote  this  indict 
ment,  there  has  been  an  evident  improvement 
in  the  directness  of  our  public  speaking  and  in 
the  general  appreciation  of  directness.  Bombast 
there  is  in  plenty  still,  and  talking  for  Bun 
combe  also;  but  the  evil  influence  of  Webster's 
orotund  manner,  wholly  unsuited  to  men  less  amply 
framed  than  he,  seems  to  be  passing  away.  Even 
if  we  have  now  no  public  speaker  who  can  attain 
at  will  to  the  noble  and  lofty  simplicity  of  Lincoln, 
there  is  satisfaction  in  recalling  that  a  recent 
Secretary  of  State  was  the  author  of  the  racy 
'Pike  County  Ballads'  and  that  a  recent  President 
of  the  United  States  is  the  author  of  the  vivid  and 
picturesque  'Winning  of  the  West.'  The  style 
189 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

of  Mr.  Hay  and  of  Mr.  Roosevelt,  each  excellent 
in  its  own  fashion,  is  the  style  of  a  gentleman 
and  of  a  scholar,  no  doubt;  but  it  is  also  the  style 
of  a  man, — of  a  man,  not  stifled  in  a  library,  but 
alert  and  alive  by  reason  of  friendly  contact  with 
his  fellow-men.  Such  also  is  the  style  of  more 
than  one  of  our  younger  university  presidents, 
in  whose  public  utterances  we  find  an  appfroach 
at  least  to  the  ideal  "speech  of  the  people  in  the 
mouth  of  the  scholar." 

It  is  pleasant  also  to  note  that  the  two  authors 
who  now  have  the  widest  popularity  among  the 
peoples  that  speak  English,  the  two  writers  of 
our  language  whose  fame  seems  most  solidly 
establisht,  Mark  Twain  and  Rudyard  Kipling, 
are  both  of  them  anxious  always  to  get  into  the 
printed  page  as  much  as  possible  of  the  elemental 
energy  of  the  spoken  word.  Both  of  them  are 
verbal  craftsmen  of  surpassing  skill,  bending 
words  to  their  bidding;  and  both  of  them  are 
ever  on  the  alert  to  avoid  the  merely  bookish 
and  the  emptily  literate.  It  is  to  be  noted  also 
that  Mark  Twain  is  an  American  and  that  Rud 
yard  Kipling  still  reveals  the  influence  exerted  on 
him  in  his  youth  by  the  American  story-tellers 
from  whom  he  learnt  his  trade  when  he  was 
serving  his  apprenticeship  in  India.  Perhaps 
this  may  be  taken  as  evidence  that  the  writers 
of  the  United  States  have  arrived  at  last  at  a 
190 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

better  understanding  of  the  true  principles  of 
rhetoric.  They  seem  to  have  renounced  the 
long-tailed  Johnsonese,  most  ponderous  and  most 
pedantic  of  dialects,  in  which  our  fathers  delighted 
only  half  a  century  ago. 

Perhaps  this  improvement  in  American  style  is 
due  in  part  to  the  disestablishment  of  the  diction 
ary  as  a  final  authority  and  to  the  discrowning  of 
the  grammar  as  the  sole  monarch  of  all  it  sur 
veyed.  Perhaps  it  is  due  to  the  growing  percep 
tion  that  the  spoken  language  is  franker,  fresher 
and  freer  than  the  written.  The  old  grammars 
were  absurdly  arbitrary  and  self-sufficient  in  the 
rules  they  laid  down  and  in  the  way  they  sought 
to  shackle  the  healthy  growth  of  the  language. 
They  were  guilty  of  the  unpardonable  sin  of  de 
claring  that  Shakspere  and  the  translators  of  the 
English  Bible  had  committed  faults  of  grammar, 
as  if  nice  customs  did  not  curtsey  to  great  kings. 
These  old-fashioned  grammarians  arrogated  to 
themselves  the  privilege  of  saying  that  this  usage 
was  right  and  that  usage  wrong,  instead  of  con 
tenting  themselves  with  the  humbler  task  of  re 
cording  the  several  usages  which  they  might  find 
in  the  pages  of  the  masters  of  English.  A  compari 
son  of  two  American  grammars,  Lindley  Mur 
ray's  and  the  more  recent  volume  by  Professor 
G.  R.  Carpenter,  will  serve  to  show  how  far  we 
have  advanced,  for  the  later  author  is  modest  and 
191 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

tentative  where  the  earlier  is  arrogant  and  dom 
ineering. 

The  trouble  with  these  outworn  grammars 
and  rhetorics  was  not  merely  that  they  laid  an 
interdict  on  certain  locutions,  but  that  their  tone 
was  always  prohibitive.  They  kept  on  declar 
ing  that  this  or  that  must  not  be  done.  Their 
advice  was  mainly  negative;  and  thus  it  tended 
always  to  cramp  and  to  stiffen.  They  ordered 
us  to  shun  double  negatives  and  split  infinitives 
and  final  prepositions; — as  if  mere  avoidance  of 
error  would  ever  give  sinew  to  a  phrase.  They 
set  up  false  standards;  and  the  result  was  that 
"schoolmaster's  English"  became  a  term  of  re 
proach,  for  it  described  a  style  juiceless  and  nerve 
less,  a  style  unfit  for  hard  work,  a  style  which  was 
as  remote  as  possible  from  the  terse  vigor  of  actual 
speech.  These  false  standards  are  not  yet  wholly 
cast  out;  and  there  are  still  sold  here  in  the  United 
States  every  year  thousands  of  text-books  which 
lay  down  rules  of  no  real  validity  and  which  tell 
the  student  what  not  to  say,  instead  of  helping 
him  to  say  what  he  wants.  But  altho  this  is 
unfortunately  true,  it  is  true  also  that  in  no  de 
partment  of  American  education  has  the  improve 
ment  been  more  obvious  than  in  the  teaching  of 
English.  Attention  is  now  rarely  called  to  the 
" grammatical  errors"  of  Shakspere;  and  the 
callow  student  is  not  now  puft  up  with  the  conceit 
192 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

that  he  knows  more  about  the  English  language 
than  the  mighty  masters  who  made  it  what  it  is. 
Three  centuries  ago,  Samuel  Daniel,  the  poet- 
laureate  of  King  James,  made  a  prophetic  in 
quiry  : — 

And  who  in  time  knows  whither  we  may  vent 

The  treasures  of  our  tongue?  to  what  strange  shores 

The  gain  of  our  best  glory  may  be  sent 

To  enrich  unknowing  nations  with  our  stores  ? 

What  world  in  the  yet  unformed  Occident 

May  come  refined  with  accents  that  are  ours. 

Not  only  in  the  " unformed  Occident"  but  on 
the  strange  shores  of  the  Orient  also  are  the 
treasures  of  our  tongue  now  enriching  nations 
unknown  when  Daniel  rimed  these  lines.  And 
here  it  is  that  English  is  favored  above  all  other 
languages,  that  it  is  spoken  not  merely  in  a  single 
compact  country  but  by  two  great  peoples  with 
their  many  outposts  on  all  the  corners  of  the  earth. 
There  is  thus  the  less  danger  that  the  language 
may  stagnate.  There  is  thus  a  far  greater  variety 
of  sources  of  refreshment  and  renewal.  The 
English  language  is  the  mother-tongue  of  the 
British  and  of  the  Americans,  of  the  Canadians 
and  of  the  Australians;  and  new  words  and  new 
meanings  are  being  contributed  constantly  from 
every  one  of  these  sources  of  supply. 

Nor  is  there  any  danger  of  contamination  in 
this  multitude  of  contributors,  all  loyal  to  the 
193 


THE  SPEECH  OF  THE  PEOPLE 

same  ideal.  Professor  Lounsbury  has  stated  the 
governing  principle  with  his  customary  clearness 
and  common  sense.  The  final  decision  as  to 
propriety  of  usage  and  as  to  all  new  words  and 
phrases,  he  tells  us,  "  rests  not  with  individuals— 
neither  with  men  of  letters,  however  prominent, 
nor  with  scholars,  however  learned.  It  is  in  the 
hands  of  the  whole  body  of  cultivated  users  of 
speech.  They  have  an  unerring  instinct  as  to 
its  necessities.  They  are  a  great  deal  wiser  than 
any  of  their  self-constituted  advisers,  however 
prominent.  Fortunately,  too,  they  have  the  abil 
ity  to  carry  their  wishes  into  effect.  They  know 
what  they  need,  and  they  can  neither  be  persuaded 
out  of  it  nor  bullied  out  of  it.  ...  If,  in  spite  of 
clamor,  they  retain  a  word  or  construction,  it  may 
generally  be  taken  for  granted  that  it  supplies 
a  demand  which  really  exists." 

(1905-) 


194 


ENGLISH    AS    A    WORLD- 
LANGUAGE 


ENGLISH  AS  A  WORLD-LANGUAGE 

FIVE  hundred  years  ago,  a  thousand  years 
ago,  fifteen  hundred  years  ago,  every  man 
of  education  could  talk  freely  and  easily  with 
every  other  man  of  education  in  Latin.  It  was 
perhaps  his  native  speech  or  he  might  have  had 
to  learn  it;  but  he  was  not  held  to  be  an  educated 
man  until  he  had  acquired  it.  Even  after  Latin 
had  ceased  to  be  a  mother-tongue,  and  when  it 
was  spoken  only  by  those  who  had  achieved  it 
by  hard  labor,  it  was  still  the  language  used  in 
diplomacy,  in  the  church,  by  men  of  letters  and 
by  philosophers  and  scientific  investigators.  Out 
of  the  fragments  of  the  Roman  Empire  new 
nations  had  compacted  themselves  slowly,  each 
with  its  own  tongue;  they  asserted  their  inde 
pendence;  they  warred  with  one  another;  and 
yet  the  Latin  language,  no  longer  native  to  any 
one  of  them,  was  the  chief  means  by  which  they 
communicated  with  each  other.  Latin  long 
sufficed  even  for  their  men  of  letters.  As  Lowell 
asserted,  "till  Dante's  time  the  Italian  poets 
thought  no  language  good  enough  to  put  their 
nothings  into  but  Latin, — and  indeed  a  dead 
tongue  was  the  best  for  dead  thoughts, — but 
Dante  found  the  common  speech  of  Florence,  in 
197 


ENGLISH   AS   A  WORLD-LANGUAGE 

which  men  bargained  and  scolded  and  made  love, 
good  enough  for  him,  and  out  of  the  world  around 
him  made  a  poem  such  as  no  Roman  ever  sang." 
A  little  later  Chaucer  chose  the  common  speech 
of  London  for  the  telling  of  his  tales.  And  yet 
after  Dante  had  descended  into  Hell  and  after 
the  Canterbury  pilgrims  had  gone  forth,  Bacon 
put  his  great  book  into  Latin  and  Milton  wrote 
not  a  few  poems  in  that  dead  tongue.  For  a 
century  after  '  Paradise  Lost,'  Latin  was  still  held 
to  be  the  most  fit  and  proper  vehicle  for  the  sys 
tems  of  the  philosophers  and  for  the  discoveries 
of  the  scientists.  The  language  of  Cicero  lingered 
as  a  very  convenient  means  of  communication 
for  the  educated  men  of  all  countries;  and  yet  at 
last  the  forces  of  nationality  and  of  race  were  too 
strong  for  it.  For  more  than  two  centuries  now 
men  of  letters  have  exprest  themselves  in  their 
mother-tongue,  and  men  of  science  have  used  each 
his  native  language  to  set  forth  their  contribu 
tions  to  the  sum  of  human  knowledge.  For  more 
than  fifteen  centuries  Latin  had  been  truly  a 
world-language,  only  in  the  end  to  surrender  its 
supremacy,  thru  no  fault  of  its  own,  but  by  sheer 
force  of  circumstances. 

For  several  centuries  there  seemed  to  be  a  likeli 
hood  that  the  place  of  Latin  might  be  taken  by 
French.     Chappuzeau,  a  strolling  hack-writer  of 
Paris,  recorded  in  1674  that  in  his  travels  in  all 
198 


ENGLISH   AS   A  WORLD-LANGUAGE 

ports  of  Christendom,  it  had  been  easy  for  him 
to  remark  "that  a  prince  then,  with  the  sole 
French  language,  which  has  spread  everywhere, 
has  the  same  advantages  as  had  Mithridates  with 
twenty- two  different  tongues."  Voltaire,  in  the 
dedicatory  letter  prefixed  to  his  'Age  of  Louis 
XIV.'  asserted  that  "the  French  language  had 
become  almost  the  universal  tongue";  and  for 
this  he  gave  credit  to  the  Grand  Monarch.  Even 
in  Germany  the  great  Frederick  preferred  the 
more  polisht  speech  of  his  French  enemies  to 
his  own  ruder  vernacular;  and  he  even  wrote 
his  needless  verses  in  French.  Gibbon,  whose 
earliest  book  had  been  composed  in  French,  hesi 
tated  whether  to  choose  that  foreign  idiom  or  his 
own  native  speech  as  the  language  in  which  to 
write  the  *  Decline  and  Fall,' — the  first  volume  of 
which  appeared  in  the  very  year  when  those  who 
had  English  for  a  mother-tongue  were  separated 
into  two  nations.  The  intensely  Italian  Alfieri 
actually  composed  his  earlier  plays  in  French, 
so  complete  was  the  acceptance  of  that  language 
among  men  of  letters  in  other  countries.  So 
late  as  1783  the  Academy  of  Berlin  proposed  as 
a  subject  for  a  prize-essay,  the  *  Universality  of  the 
French  Language';  and  the  reward  was  won  by 
the  brilliant  Rivarol,  who  discust  first  the  reasons 
why  his  own  language  was  universally  accepted, 
and  then  inquired  whether  the  language  merited 
199 


ENGLISH    AS    A   WORLD-LANGUAGE 

this  and  whether  it  would  preserve  its  dominant 
position. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  French  language  is 
well  adapted  for  general  use.  It  has  exceeding 
clarity  and  precision  and  point;  it  has  inherited 
many  of  the  best  qualities  of  the  Latin  it  bid  fair 
to  supersede.  But  it  has  failed  to  retain  its  ap 
parent  universality.  Within  a  century  after  Vol 
taire  and  Frederick,  after  Gibbon  and  Rivarol, 
French  had  lost  a  large  part  of  its  pre-eminence. 
This  was  thru  no  failing  of  the  language  itself, 
since  its  merits  remained  what  they  had  been. 
The  spread  of  a  language  and  its  general  accep 
tance  depend  very  little  upon  its  own  qualities 
and  very  largely  upon  the  qualities  of  the  race 
that  has  it  for  a  mother-tongue  and  upon  the 
commanding  position  this  race  holds  in  the  strug 
gle  for  economic  mastery. 

Before  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  was  past,  it  began  to  be  seen  that  the  French 
nation  did  not  bulk  as  big  in  the  eyes  of  the  other 
peoples  as  it  had  done  a  hundred  years  earlier; 
and  by  the  end  of  the  last  quarter  it  was  obvious 
that  the  French  had  ceased  to  expand  and  that 
the  German  Empire  was  more  powerful,  the 
Russian  Empire  also,  while  the  greatest  develop 
ment  had  taken  place  in  the  two  branches  of  the 
English-speaking  race,  the  British  Empire  and 
the  United  States.  The  facility  and  the  felicity 

2QO 


ENGLISH   AS   A  WORLD-LANGUAGE 

of  the  French  language,  the  range  and  the  weight 
of  French  literature,  might  for  a  little  postpone 
the  inevitable;  but  the  universality  of  the  French 
language  had  ceased  to  be  a  fact.  Even  while 
Voltaire  and  Frederick,  Gibbon  and  Rivarol,  were 
still  alive,  the  French  had  let  India  and  Canada 
slip  from  their  hands;  and  thereafter  their 
language  could  no  longer  make  good  its  claim 
to  universal  acceptance.  For  a  brief  space  only, 
for  perhaps  a  century,  French  had  seemed  about 
to  take  the  place  of  Latin  as  a  world-language. 
This  hope  has  now  long  since  departed.  French 
may  still  be  the  second  language  of  most  educated 
men  in  the  United  States  and  in  Great  Britain; 
and  for  a  little  while  longer  it  may  retain  this 
position,  because  the  rich  treasury  of  French 
literature  amply  rewards  every  one  for  the  labor 
needed  to  acquire  the  key  that  unlocks  it.  Yet 
even  in  the  English-speaking  world  French  is 
being  hard-pusht  by  German,  which  is  more 
valuable  commercially.  And  in  Italy  there  are 
beginning  to  be  signs  that  French  is  barely  holding 
its  own  against  English. 

Beyond  all  question  this  failure  of  French  to 
establish  itself  as  a  world-language  in  succession 
to  Latin  is  a  misfortune.  It  is  a  misfortune  not 
only  to  the  French  themselves  but  also  to  the 
Germans  and  to  us  who  speak  English.  The 
advantages  of  a  world-language  are  indisputable. 
201 


ENGLISH   AS   A   WORLD-LANGUAGE 

Without  it  every  man  must  be  content  to  express 
himself  in  his  own  tongue;  and  every  man  who 
needs  to  know  what  has  been  said  upon  the  sub 
ject  in  which  he  is  especially  interested  must  of 
necessity  master  half  a  dozen  other  languages. 
And  this  is  the  disadvantage  of  the  individual 
only;  even  more  far-reaching  and  significant  are 
the  disadvantages  of  the  several  communities 
who  have  each  only  the  speech  of  their  own  stock. 
In  the  absence  of  a  common  tongue  they  may  fail 
to  understand  one  another;  and  misunderstand 
ings  may  lead  to  bickerings  and  bickerings  may 
bring  them  to  open  strife.  So  long  as  French  held 
its  universality,  even  if  that  universality  was  not 
complete,  it  served  as  a  national  speech  for  the 
French  themselves  and  it  was  also  the  second 
language  of  all  educated  men  in  which  they  could 
communicate  without  constraint,  altho  they 
might  reserve  each  of  them  his  own  mother-tongue 
for  all  the  ordinary  uses  of  life  and  for  self- 
expression  in  literature. 

There  is  no  longer  any  probability  that  any  one 
of  the  leading  languages  will  drive  out  any  of  the 
others.  Is  there  any  possibility  that  any  one  of 
them  can  succeed  to  the  position  of  French  as  this 
second  language  of  all  educated  men?  Or  is 
there  any  possibility  of  the  world-wide  acceptance 
of  some  artificial  language,  which  shall  arouse 
no  international  jealousy  and  which  all  races 
202 


ENGLISH  AS   A  WORLD-LANGUAGE 

will  acquire  as  the  best  medium  for  communica 
tion  with  each  other? 

Of  these  artificial  languages  there  is  no  lack. 
Volapiik  had  a  fleeting  vogue  a  few  years  ago 
and  Esperanto  to-day  has  its  hundred  of  advo 
cates.  These  invented  idioms  appeal  strongly 
to  many  who  feel  the  need  of  a  world-language 
and  who  fear  the  impossibility  of  the  general 
adoption  of  any  one  of  the  national  tongues. 
Many  there  are  who  find  themselves  forced  to 
consider  the  practicability  of  one  or  another  of 
the  artificial  languages.  So  urgent  is  the  ques 
tion  in  their  minds  that  they  have  establisht  a 
Delegation  for  the  Choice  of  an  International 
Language.  Adhesions  to  this  Delegation  have 
been  received  from  two  or  three  hundred  organ 
izations  of  one  kind  or  another, — academies, 
chambers  of  commerce,  scientific  societies  and 
the  like.  The  Delegation  has  been  hailed  as 
"a  perfectly  practical  solution  of  something  about 
which  many  have  dreamed  to  no  purpose. " 

A  student  of  history  may  be  permitted  to 
doubt  whether  the  recommendation  of  any  Dele 
gation  will  really  bring  us  nearer  to  a  practical 
solution.  Hitherto  large  bodies  of  men  have 
never  been  willing  to  take  the  trouble  to  acquire 
a  language  merely  for  its  own  sake.  A  language 
without  a  literature  is  sadly  handicapt;  and  no 
artificial  language  is  ever  likely  to  have  a  litera- 
203 


ENGLISH  AS   A  WORLD-LANGUAGE 

ture  of  its  own.  Poetry  especially  must  be  sus 
tained  by  emotion;  and  genuine  emotion  ex 
presses  itself  inevitably  in  the  mother-tongue. 
The  Latin  poems  of  Petrarch  and  of  Milton  are 
pitifully  inferior  in  all  that  takes  poetry  home  to 
the  hearts  of  men.  Even  a  great  poet  is  not 
likely  to  write  great  poetry  in  any  language  in 
which  he  has  not  "bargained  and  scolded  and 
made  love";  and  the  greatest  poetry  is  likely  to 
be  very  close  to  the  common  speech  and  to  choose 
for  its  own  the  words  of  the  hearth  and  of  the 
market-place.  Will  anybody  ever  use  any  in 
vented  dialect  by  the  fireside  and  when  he  goes 
courting?  Will  children  baby-talk  in  any  book- 
made  vocabulary?  Will  any  mother  ever  croon 
a  lullaby  over  her  cradled  child  in  Esperanto? 
Will  schoolmasters  thruout  the  world  combine 
to  instruct  youth  in  a  language  without  a  past 
and  with  only  a  doubtful  future?  And  can  any 
language  made  to  order  in  the  study  ever  possess 
the  vigor  and  the  variety  of  a  language  which  has 
been  evolved  slowly  thru  the  ages  in  response 
to  the  needs  of  men,  like  a  tool  shaping  itself 
slowly  to  the  hand  that  wields  it  ? 

It  needs  to  be  said  also  that  even  if  any  arti 
ficial  language  had  all  the  merits  claimed  for  it 
by  its  inventors,  we  should  be  justified  in  doubt 
ing  whether  it  had  any  real  prospect  of  expansion 
and  adoption.  For  not  by  its  own  merits  does 
204 


ENGLISH   AS   A  WORLD-LANGUAGE 

a  language  prosper  and  extend  its  domain  thruout 
the  world,  but  by  the  merits  of  the  stock  that 
speaks  it.  The  swords  of  the  Roman  legions  and 
the  prowess  of  the  Roman  proconsuls  carried 
Latin  from  the  Pillars  of  Hercules  to  the  cataracts 
of  the  Nile,  and  not  the  noble  dignity  of  the  Cice 
ronian  syntax.  The  swift  courage  of  great  gener 
als  and  the  wily  intrigues  of  adroit  diplomatists 
pusht  French  into  the  foremost  place,  and  not  the 
ease  and  clarity  of  Moliere's  sentences.  The 
fate  of  French,  like  the  fate  of  Latin,  was  wholly 
independent  of  the  specific  qualities  of  that 
speech. 

"A  language  cannot  be  made  either  to  improve 
or  degenerate  of  itself,"  said  Professor  Louns- 
bury  at  the  Congress  of  Arts  and  Sciences  held 
at  St.  Louis  to  commemorate  the  centenary  of  the 
yielding  up  by  the  French  of  that  Mississippi 
valley  they  had  once  taken  for  their  own.  A 
language  is  "nothing  but  the  reflex  of  the  spirit 
and  aims  of  the  men  who  employ  it,  and  it  will 
rise  or  fall  in  accordance  with  their  intellectual 
and  moral  condition.  Its  continued  existence, 
therefore,  depends  solely  upon  the  fact  whether 
the  men  to  whom  it  is  an  inheritance  are  culti 
vated  enough  to  enrich  its  literature,  virtuous 
enough  to  elevate  and  maintain  its  character,  and 
strong  enough  to  uphold  and  extend  its  sway." 
And  Professor  Lounsbury  added  a  further  sugges- 
205 


ENGLISH   AS   A   WORLD-LANGUAGE 

tion  of  high  significance:  " it  is  a  question  whether 
under  modern  conditions  any  language  can  be 
sure  of  continued  existence  which  does  not  have 
behind  it  the  support  of  a  great  nationality." 
If  this  may  be  said  about  a  living  speech,  born 
on  the  lips  of  men,  a  mother-tongue  first  lispt  at 
a  mother's  knee,  what  chance  is  there  for  an  arti 
ficial  language,  put  together  in  a  library,  bare  of 
all  literature  and  borne  up  by  no  nationality 
whatever  ? 

In  Du  Bellay's  'Defence  and  Illustration  of 
the  French  Language/  the  poet  declared  loftily 
that  "the  same  natural  law  which  commands 
each  of  us  to  defend  the  place  of  his  birth,  obliges 
us  also  to  guard  the  dignity  of  our  tongue."  But 
who  will  ever  care  to  guard  the  dignity  of  any  of 
these  made-to-order  languages?  Who  will  ever 
feel  the  words  of  these  manufactured  vocabularies 
rising  to  his  lips  involuntarily  in  the  hour  of  need  ? 
When  the  laws  of  a  powerful  nation  begin  to  be 
written  in  one  of  these  contrived  dialects,  when 
its  dictionary  and  its  grammar  serve  satis 
factorily  for  the  customary  ritual  of  marriages 
and  of  funerals,  when  countless  children  cry 
aloud  in  the  night  and  use  its  words  to  call  their 
mothers,  when  the  thousands  of  sailors  on  a 
mighty  fleet  and  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
soldiers  in  a  mighty  army  shout  it  in  the  heat  of 
battle,  then  and  then  only  may  the  advocates  of 
206 


ENGLISH   AS   A   WORLD-LANGUAGE 

that  artificial  language  begin  to  take  hope.  Then 
and  then  only  may  they  feel  justified  in  looking 
forward  with  confidence.  And  until  then  the 
rest  of  us  can  go  about  our  daily  duties  disregard 
ing  their  assertions  and  their  appeals. 

To  say  this  is  not  to  deny  that  one  or  another 
of  these  artificial  tongues  may  not  serve  certain 
of  the  humbler  purposes  of  commerce,  and  that 
some  men  may  use  it  in  bargaining,  even  if  they 
do  not  feel  it  fit  for  love-making. 

But  the  need  of  a  world-language  is  as  obvious 
as  ever,  even  if  the  futility  of  any  artificial  tongue 
is  equally  evident.  And  if  the  coming  world- 
language  cannot  be  made  artificially,  it  must  be 
one  of  the  existing  tongues,  already  spoken  by 
millions  of  people.  A  world-language  may  be 
but  a  dream;  but  it  may  be  a  reality  of  the  future. 
And  if  the  coming  generations  are  to  be  possest 
of  this  inestimable  boon,  which  of  the  living 
tongues  will  achieve  this  universal  acceptance? 
It  is  easy  to  put  the  question;  and  it  is  impossible 
to  give  the  answer.  Yet  it  is  not  difficult  to  point 
out  certain  probabilities.  We  may  dismiss  French 
at  the  start;  it  has  had  its  chance  and  lost  it. 
We  may  regret  the  fact  but  we  cannot  deny  it. 
The  French  have  been  beaten  in  the  race  for  ex 
pansion  by  those  who  speak  German,  and  by  us 
who  speak  English.  There  will  soon  be  twice  as 
many  men  and  women  having  German  for  a 
207 


ENGLISH   AS   A   WORLD-LANGUAGE 

mother-tongue  as  now  have  French  for  their 
native  speech.  There  are  already  almost  three 
times  as  many  men  speaking  English  as  there 
are  speaking  French. 

The  possibilities  of  growth  and  expansion  still 
lie  boundless  before  English.  It  has  already  the 
support  not  of  one  great  nationality  only  but  of 
two.  It  is  spoken  by  more  people  than  speak 
its  two  chief  rivals  together;  and  its  rate  of  in 
crease  is  more  rapid  than  either  of  theirs.  The 
two  nations  who  claim  English  as  their  birthright 
are  at  least  as  abundant  in  energy,  in  enterprise, 
and  in  determination  as  the  members  of  any  other 
race.  It  possesses  a  splendid  literature,  holding 
its  own  in  comparison  with  Greek  and  with 
French,  lacking  certain  of  their  characteristics, 
no  doubt,  but  making  up  for  these  by  qualities 
of  its  own  with  which  they  are  less  richly  en 
dowed.  This  literature  reveals  no  hint  of  decay 
or  decadence  in  the  present.  In  the  nineteenth 
century  the  British  branch  of  it  can  withstand 
comparison  with  the  French  literature  of  the 
same  period,  while  the  American  branch  can 
hardly  be  held  inferior  to  the  German  literature 
contemporary  with  it.  Already  is  English  appeal 
ing  to  certain  authors  of  the  smaller  races, — for 
example,  Maarten  Maartens,  the  Dutchman,  and 
Joseph  Conrad,  the  Pole, — who  have  chosen  it  as 
the  vehicle  of  their  literature  in  preference  to  their 
208 


ENGLISH  AS   A  WORLD-LANGUAGE 

own  native  idioms  of  narrower  appeal, — just  as 
the  Scot  Hamilton  and  the  Italian  Galiani  for 
merly  preferred  French.  It  seems  to  be  about  to 
enter  on  the  favored  fortune  predicted  for  it  early 
in  the  nineteenth  century  by  Jacob  Grimm,  who 
declared  that  English  has  "a  just  claim  to  be 
called  a  language  of  the  world;  and  it  appears  to 
be  destined,  like  the  English  race,  to  a  higher  and 
broader  sway  in  all  quarters  of  the  earth." 

Jacob  Grimm  was  a  large-hearted  and  open- 
minded  man.  He  stands  in  markt  contrast  to 
another  German  who  is  now  temporarily  domi 
ciled  in  one  of  the  smaller  towns  of  New  Eng 
land,  and  who  seems  to  fear  that  the  acceptance 
of  a  world-language  would  crowd  out  the  national 
tongues  and  force  an  abandonment  of  the  native 
speech,  such  as  the  Russians  have  attempted  in 
Poland  and  in  Finland.  This  German  has  shrilly 
asserted  that  "the  acceptance  of  any  language, 
were  it  English  or  French  or  Spanish,  German 
or  Dutch,  Russian  or  Japanese,  would  immediate 
ly  not  only  crush  the  pride  of  the  other  nations 
but  would  give  to  the  favored  people  such  an  enor 
mous  advantage  in  the  control  of  the  political 
world  and  such  immeasurable  preference  in  the 
world's  markets  that  no  healthy  nation  would 
consent  to  it  before  its  downfall."  This  might 
be  an  important  statement,  if,  by  the  acceptance 
of  one  tongue  as  a  world-language  we  meant  only 
209 


ENGLISH   AS   A   WORLD-LANGUAGE 

the  enforced  or  recognized  adoption  of  that  speech. 
But  no  one  has  been  so  foolish  as  to  suggest  any 
thing  of  the  sort. 

A  century  ago  French  was  almost  accepted  as 
a  world-language  because  it  had  become  the 
second  language  of  every  educated  man;  and 
because  a  book  in  French  was  accessible  to  all 
men  of  education  everywhere.  To  predict  the 
possible  acceptance  of  English  as  a  world- 
language  means  no  more  than  this,— that  Eng 
lish  bids  fair  to  become  the  second  language  of 
all  educated  men  everywhere — whether  their 
native  speech  is  French  or  German,  Spanish  or 
Italian,  Russian  or  Japanese. 

If  this  shall  come  to  pass  it  will  need  no  national 
edict;  it  will  not  have  to  be  registered  by  any 
national  decree;  and  it  can  be  delayed  by  no 
national  pride,  for  it  will  have  been  brought  about 
by  sheer  force  of  circumstance,  by  the  march  of 
events  against  which  emperors  are  powerless 
even  to  protest.  Whether  any  one  of  the  living 
tongues  is  ever  to  win  acceptance  as  the  second 
language  of  educated  men,  as  the  highly  desirable 
world-language  of  international  communication, 
can  be  decided  only  by  time;  and  no  man  may 
lift  the  veil  of  the  future.  But  if  any  one  of  the 
living  tongues  is  to  achieve  this  distinction  and 
to  serve  this  useful  purpose,  that  tongue  is  most 
likely  to  be  English.  We  who  speak  English 
210 


ENGLISH   AS   A   WORLD-LANGUAGE 

may  be  eager  to  help  in  bringing  this  about  and 
to  hasten  it;  but  we  can  do  little  or  nothing. 
Those  who  speak  rival  tongues  may  be  determined 
to  prevent  the  spread  of  our  speech;  but  they  will 
have  little  ability  even  to  delay  it.  If  it  should 
come  to  pass,  this  will  be  only  because  the  accept 
ance  of  English  was  inevitable. 

If  English  should  take  this  commanding  posi 
tion,  it  would  not  be  because  of  the  merits  of  the 
language  itself;  and  yet  the  language  happens 
to  be  well  fitted  for  the  duties  which  seem  to  lie 
before  it.  Indeed,  English  is  quite  as  well  quali 
fied  to  serve  as  a  world-language  as  Latin  or  as 
French.  Undeniably  it  lacks  certain  of  the  special 
advantages  of  each  of  these  two  supple  and  ample 
tongues;  but  it  has  also  special  advantages  of  its 
own.  Perhaps  the  most  obvious  of  these  ad 
vantages  is  the  surpassing  wealth  of  its  double 
vocabulary.  To  quote  again  from  Jacob  Grimm, 
the  perfected  development  of  English  "  issued 
from  a  marvelous  union  of  the  two  noblest 
tongues  of  Europe,  the  Germanic  and  the  Ro 
manic."  And  Grimm  also  asserted  that  "in 
richness,  in  compact  adjustment  of  parts,  and  in 
pure  intelligence,  none  of  the  living  languages 
can  be  compared  with  it, — not  even  our  own 
German,  which  must  cast  off  many  imperfections 
before  it  can  boldly  enter  on  its  career." 

It  must  be  noted  also  that  the  varied  vocabu- 


211 


ENGLISH  AS   A  WORLD-LANGUAGE 

lary  of  English,  partly  Teutonic  and  partly 
Romanic,  is  likely  to  be  nourisht  and  refresht 
in  the  future,  in  consequence  of  the  scattering  of 
the  English-speaking  race  on  all  the  shores  of 
all  the  seven  seas,  whereby  new  and  expressive 
words,  as  well  as  terse  vernacular  phrases,  are 
constantly  called  into  existence  to  meet  unex 
pected  needs,  the  best  of  these  being  sooner  or 
later  lifted  into  the  statelier  speech  of  literature. 
It  is  not  a  danger  to  the  future  of  the  English 
language,  but  a  positive  gain,  that  there  are  in 
existence  hosts  of  Americanisms  and  Briticisms, 
even  of  Canadianisms  and  Australianisms,  serv 
ing  temporary  and  local  uses  in  current  speech, 
but  all  of  them  ready  for  a  larger  utility  whenever 
the  loftier  English  of  the  library  has  need  for 
just  these  vigorous  terms.  The  outposts  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  peoples  are  proving-grounds  for  the 
seedlings  of  English  speech.  And  English  has 
thus  an  advantage  denied,  so  far  at  least,  to  any 
other  language. 

Yet  another  advantage  English  has  over  all  its 
rivals,  modern  and  ancient.  It  has  shed  the 
primitive  complexities  of  syntax  which  still 
cumber  most  of  the  other  living  languages,  and 
more  especially  German.  English  is  almost  a 
grammarless  tongue.  The  genders  of  English 
nouns  are  the  natural  genders  of  the  things  they 
name,  whereas  in  French,  for  example,  the  sun 
212 


ENGLISH   AS   A  WORLD-LANGUAGE 

is  masculine  and  the  moon  feminine,  while  in 
German,  the  sun  is  feminine  and  the  moon 
masculine.  In  German  a  maiden  is  absurdly 
neuter.  Moreover,  English  nouns  are  not  de 
clined  and  English  adjectives  do  not  have  to  shift 
their  terminations  to  accord  with  their  nouns  in 
case  and  gender.  And  in  English,  once  more, 
verbs  are  conjugated  in  the  simplest  fashion  by 
means  of  uniform  auxiliaries.  Altho  scholars  of 
an  older  generation,  like  Professor  Goldwin 
Smith,  may  lament  this  "lack  of  the  power  of  de 
clension  and  conjugation,"  linguistic  students  of 
the  younger  school,  Professor  Jespersen,  for 
one,  see  a  long  step  forward  in  this  simplification 
of  the  machinery  of  communication.  They  as 
sert  that  English  is  thus  revealed  as  the  most 
advanced  of  all  languages.  Probably  it  was 
this  characteristic  of  our  speech  that  Grimm  had 
in  mind  when  he  declared  English  to  be  unrivalled 
"in  compact  adjustment  of  parts  and  in  pure  in 
telligence."  Just  as  the  steam-engine  of  to-day 
has  been  simplified  by  the  omission  of  useless 
parts  and  just  as  all  other  machines  have  been 
reduced  to  their  necessary  elements,  so  the  Eng 
lish  language,  the  verbal  machine  of  a  practical 
race,  has  got  rid  of  the  manifold  grammatical 
intricacies  it  found  it  could  do  without. 

In  one  respect,   and   in  one  respect  only,   is 
English  inferior  to  the  other  modern  languages. 
213 


ENGLISH    AS    A    WORLD-LANGUAGE 

Its  spelling  is  still  barbarously  complex.  Its 
orthography  is  illogical  and  ckaotic.  It  is  the 
easiest  of  languages  to  learn  by  word  of  mouth; 
and  it  is  the  hardest  of  languages  to  acquire  from 
the  printed  page.  The  spelling  of  Italian  and  the 
spelling  of  Spanish  present  no  difficulties  to  the 
child  or  to  the  foreigner.  The  spelling  of  French 
and  the  spelling  of  German  cannot  be  so  highly 
commended;  but  their  condition  is  far  better 
than  the  condition  of  English ;  and  both  in  France 
and  in  Germany  action  has  already  been  taken  to 
improve  the  national  orthography,  to  reduce  it 
to  rule,  to  regulate  the  analogies  and  to  omit  the 
useless  letters  which  merely  distend  certain  words. 
The  two  peoples  who  speak  English  like  to  regard 
themselves  as  eminently  practical;  and  now  that 
the  example  has  been  set  by  their  two  chief  com 
mercial  rivals,  perhaps  they  may  be  aroused  from 
their  inertia.  There  are  welcome  signs  of  late 
that  the  question  is  beginning  to  awaken  public 
interest.  It  is  satisfactory  to  know  that  almost 
all  of  those  whose  special  studies  have  qualified 
them  for  judgment  are  united  in  believing  that 
there  is  need  for  prompt  action  if  our  noble  tongue 
is  to  be  kept  fit  for  service  in  the  splendid  future 
which  seems  to  lie  open  before  it. 

But  the  simplifying  of  English  spelling  in  the 
future,  like  the  simplifying  of  English  syntax  in 
the  past,  will  not  suffice  to  bring  about  the  accep- 
214 


ENGLISH    AS    A    WORLD-LANGUAGE 

tance  of  our  speech  as  the  second  language  of 
every  educated  man.  That  may  be  accomplisht 
only  by  forces  other  than  those  affecting  the 
language  itself.  In  fact,  it  will  come,  if  ever  it 
shall  come,  solely  because  it  had  to  come  in  the 
inevitable  march  of  events. 

(1907.) 


215 


SIMPLIFIED  SPELLING  AND 
"FONETIC  REFORM" 


SIMPLIFIED  SPELLING  AND  "FONETIC 
REFORM" 

EVER  since  the  Simplified  Spelling  Board 
began  its  work  of  enlightenment  by  issuing 
its  first  circular,  it  has  been  confronted  with  a 
special  difficulty.  The  Simplified  Spelling  Board 
was  organized  to  hasten  the  progressive  simpli 
fying  of  English  orthography,  and  not  to  introduce 
a  scientifically  "fonetic"  spelling.  The  original 
members  of  the  Board  believed  it  was  idle  to  ex 
pect  that  the  English-speaking  peoples  could  ever 
be  persuaded  to  adopt  any  thorogoing  scheme 
for  making  our  spelling  conform  closely  to  the 
sound  of  our  words.  These  original  members 
hoped  that  the  public,  which  had  paid  no  at 
tention  to  the  extreme  demands  of  the  radical 
"fonetic"  reformers,  might  be  led  to  see  the  many 
advantages  of  hastening  the  progressive  simpli 
fying  of  our  orthography,  which  has  been  going 
on  slowly  but  unceasingly,  and  which  has  given 
us  economic  (instead  of  ceconomicke) ,  jail  (instead 
of  gaol)  and  wagon  (instead  of  waggon).  It  was 
because  they  desired  to  accelerate  the  progress 
of  this  steady  simplification,  that  they  selected 
the  name  for  their  organization  and  called  them- 
219 


SIMPLIFIED   SPELLING   AND 

selves  the  Simplified  Spelling  Board.  And  when 
a  kindred  body  was  establisht  in  Great  Britain 
to  work  in  alliance  with  the  American  group,  it 
chose  a  similar  name  and  called  itself  the  Sim 
plified  Spelling  Society. 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  the  care  with  which  this 
title  was  chosen,  both  the  American  Board  and  the 
British  Society  are  continually  accused  of  advo 
cating  some  kind  of  radical  "fonetic  reform." 
A  very  large  proportion  of  those  who  have  paid 
no  attention  to  the  subject  seem  to  be  unable  to 
grasp  the  difference  between  a  progressive  sim 
plification  of  English  spelling  (chiefly  by  encour 
aging  the  existing  tendency  to  drop  out  needless 
letters)  and  an  absolute  remaking  of  our  orthog 
raphy  in  accord  with  the  demands  of  phonetic 
science.  There  are  many  casual  readers  of  news 
papers  (and  even  not  a  few  careless  writers  for 
newspapers)  who  suppose  that  any  spelling  less 
complicated  than  that  to  which  they  are  accus 
tomed,  must  be  an  instance  of  "  fonetic  reform." 
They  are  unable  to  see  that  there  may  be  a  safe 
middle  path  of  progress,  between  the  retention  of 
all  the  absurd  and  illogical  complexities  of  our 
present  spelling  and  that  ultra-logical  and  revo 
lutionary  upsetting  of  all  our  orthographic  tra 
ditions  which  would  be  caused  by  the  acceptance 
of  any  searching  scheme  of  "fonetic  reform." 
Underlying  the  countless  quips  and  jibes  with 
220 


SIMPLIFIED   SPELLING   AND   "  FONETIC   REFORM" 

which  the  journalistic  wits  sought  to  overwhelm 
the  suggestions  of  the  Simplified  Spelling  Board, 
there  is  to  be  perceived  the  assumption  that  the 
partizans  of  simplified  spelling  were  urging  again 
in  a  new  guise  the  impossible  proposals  of  the  most 
impractical  "fonetic  reformers." 

For  this  widespread  impression  there  is  no 
warrant  whatever.  The  Simplified  Spelling  Board 
came  into  existence  because  its  members  were 
convinced  that  the  plans  of  the  "fonetic  reform 
ers"  stood  no  chance  of  adoption  and  that  if 
anything  was  to  be  done  to  better  English  orthog 
raphy,  there  must  be  an  entirely  new  departure. 
This  difference  of  aim  and  of  method  the  Board 
has  set  forth  repeatedly;  and  it  has  again  and 
again  declared  that  its  proposals  had  no  immediate 
relation  to  what  has  been  known  as  "  fonetic 
reform." 

Possibly  one  reason  why  there  is  still  more  or 
less  confusion  in  the  minds  of  many  between 
the  modest  proposals  of  the  Simplified  Spelling 
Board  and  the  sweeping  demands  of  the  "fonetic 
reformers"  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  very 
few  English  readers  of  average  intelligence  know 
anything  about  phonetics  or  even  about  the  his 
tory  of  English  spelling;  and  it  is  this  absence  of 
knowledge  which  leads  them  to  confound  two 
methods  of  regenerating  English  orthography, 
which  are  in  reality  very  different  in  scope  and 
221 


SIMPLIFIED  SPELLING  AND 

in  effect.  And  perhaps  there  may  be  profit  in 
declaring  these  two  methods,  and  in  setting  them 
side  by  side,  so  as  to  show  clearly  the  exact  differ 
ence  between  them. 

As  a  result  of  manifold  causes,  which  it  is  not 
necessary  to  specify  here,  the  spelling  of  English 
is  in  a  worse  condition  than  that  of  any  other 
language.  Of  course,  the  real  purpose  of  any 
method  of  spelling  is  to  represent  the  sound  of  the 
word,  if  not  with  unswerving  accuracy,  at  least 
as  directly  as  may  be  possible.  A  language  has 
a  satisfactory  orthography  only  when  the  spelling- 
book  is  wholly  unnecessary  and  when  there  is  a 
single  symbol  for  every  sound  and  a  single  sound 
for  every  symbol.  This  is  the  case  in  Italian  and 
in  Spanish ;  and  in  those  two  tongues  no  one  read 
ing  any  word  need  have  a  moment's  hesitation 
as  to  its  pronunciation.  That  this  is  not  the  case 
in  English  we  all  know  to  our  sorrow. 

In  English  some  sounds  are  represented  by 
many  different  symbols  and  some  symbols  rep 
resent  many  different  sounds.  For  example, 
the  sound  of  e  in  let  represented  in  at  least  seven 
different  ways,  as  in  let  itself,  in  head,  in  heifer, 
in  leopard,  in  says,  in  many,  and  in  said.  That 
is  to  say,  this  simple  vowel  sound  is  in  our  present 
spelling  indicated  sometimes  by  one  vowel,  e, 
sometimes  by  another  vowel,  a,  and  sometimes 
by  combinations  as  dissimilar  as  ea,  ei,  eo,  ay, 

222 


SIMPLIFIED   SPELLING   AND    "  FONETIC   REFORM" 

and  ai.  As  a  result,  when  we  come  across  the 
words  read  and  lead,  it  is  only  from  the  context 
that  we  can  find  out  whether  they  are  to  be  pro 
nounced  so  as  to  rime  with  fed  or  with  feed.  And 
the  consonants  are  no  better  off  than  the  vowels. 
For  instance,  the  sound  of  sh  in  shape  is  repre 
sented  in  at  least  eight  different  ways,— as  in 
shape  itself,  in  sugar,  in  suspicion,  in  conscious,  in 
ocean,  in  potion,  in  tissue,  and  in  anxious.  That 
is  to  say,  this  simple  sound  is  indicated  some 
times  by  one  consonant  s,  sometimes  by  this  con 
sonant  doubled,  sometimes  by  5  in  combination 
with  other  consonants,  and  sometimes  by  com 
binations  into  which  5  does  not  enter.  Nothing 
can  be  more  illogical  than  the  fact  that  in  our 
present  orthography  the  sound  of  u  in  burn  is 
represented  by  every  vowel  in  the  language,  as 
in  burn,  jern,  learn,  fir,  myrrh  and  journey.  But 
the  very  worst  example  of  the  chaos  of  our  ordi 
nary  spelling  is  to  be  found  in  the  symbol  ough,  in 
cough  (pronounced  coff),  in  rough  (pronounced 
ruff),  in  dough  (pronounced  doe),  in  through 
(pronounced  throo),  in  borough  (pronounced 
boro),  in  hough  (pronounced  hock)  and  in  plough 
(prounced  plow). 

These  are  but  a  few  specimens,  taken  almost 
at  random,  to  make  evident  the  lack  of  logic  in 
the  orthography  of  English.     While  the  orthog 
raphy  of  French  and  the  orthography  of  German 
223 


are  neither  of  them  perfect,  it  would  be  impossible 
to  pick  out  of  either  language  specimens  of  spell 
ing  as  grotesque  as  those  which  have  been  here 
selected  from  our  ordinary  English  vocabulary. 
And  those  here  presented  have  been  but  a  few 
pluckt  from  an  almost  limitless  field.  It  is  easy 
enough  to  understand  how  revolting  such  a  situ 
ation  must  be  to  radical  reformers  governed  by 
strict  logic.  There  is  no  difficulty  in  perceiving 
why  they  have  felt  moved  to  act  on  the  advice  of 
Hamlet  and  "  reform  it  altogether."  To  many 
a  passionate  believer  in  perfection  for  its  own 
sake,  the  very  difficulty  of  the  task  would  be  in 
spiring. 

The  task  is  soon  seen  to  be  more  difficult  than 
it  seems  at  first.  Those  who  have  carefully 
studied  the  English  language  as  it  is  now  spoken, 
appear  to  be  agreed  that  there  are  about  forty 
distinct  sounds  in  our  speech.  Forty  sounds, 
and  our  alphabet  has  only  twenty-six  letters! 
In  fact,  when  we  consider  it  carefully  we  find 
only  twenty-three  useful  letters,  since  q  is  em 
ployed  only  with  «,  (when  it  is  pronounced  kw), 
since  c  is  pronounced  either  s  or  k,  and  since  x  is 
merely  ks.  Even  if  every  one  of  the  remaining 
twenty-three  letters  should  be  limited  rigorously 
to  a  single  sound — a  limitation  which  would 
itself  upset  all  our  orthographic  traditions — even 
then  there  would  be  some  seventeen  sounds  for 
224 


SIMPLIFIED  SPELLING  AND   "  FONETIC   REFORM" 

which  our  present  alphabet  would  provide  no 
symbol.  These  seventeen  sounds  would  de 
mand  either  the  invention  of  new  letters  or  the 
adding  of  new  accents  of  some  sort  to  the  existing 
letters,  so  that  one  sound  might  be  represented 
by  the  letter  as  we  now  know  it  and  another 
sound  by  the  same  letter  with  an  added  accent. 
This  is  the  device  by  means  of  which  the  French 
and  the  Germans  have  got  out  of  a  similar  diffi 
culty. 

New  accents,  new  letters,  digraphs  of  one  kind 
or  another,  these  would  need  to  be  supplied  for 
nearly  one-half  of  the  recognized  sounds  of  our 
language;  and  the  result  of  all  these  additions 
would  be  to  make  a  page  of  English  look  very 
strange  indeed  to  most  readers.  But  the  addi 
tion  of  these  new  devices  would  not  be  as  startling 
and  as  upsetting  to  all  our  orthographic  habits, 
as  the  changes  which  would  result  from  the 
rigorous  limitation  of  every  symbol  to  a  single 
sound  and  of  every  sound  to  a  single  symbol. 
As  the  vowel  sound  of  e  in  let  is  now  represented 
in  seven  different  ways,  as  in  let,  head,  heifer, 
leopard,  says,  many,  and  said,  then  all  the  words 
in  at  least  six  of  these  classes  would  have  to  be 
spelt  in  some  new  fashion.  As  the  consonant 
sound  of  sh  in  shape  is  now  represented  in  eight 
different  ways,  as  in  shape,  sugar,  suspicion,  con 
scious,  ocean,  potion,  tissue  and  anxious,  then  all 
225 


SIMPLIFIED   SPELLING  AND   "  FONETIC  REFORM" 

the  words  in  at  least  seven  of  these  groups  would 
necessarily  appear  in  a  novel  orthography. 

Now,  this  is  precisely  what  the  extreme  "fonetic 
reformers"  demand.  They  see  no  health  except 
in  the  exact  adjustment  of  symbol  to  sound  and 
of  sound  to  symbol,  no  matter  how  abundant 
and  how  violent  the  changes  may  be  which  the 
adoption  of  this  scientific  system  of  orthography 
would  compel.  It  would  mean  the  making  over 
of  English  spelling,  once  for  all,  with  little  or  no 
regard  for  existing  conditions.  No  doubt,  there 
is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  in  behalf  of  this  proposi 
tion.  It  is  logical;  it  would  be  permanent;  it 
would  put  English  spelling  on  a  level  with  the 
spelling  of  Spanish  and  Italian;  it  would  make 
English  spelling  far  more  exact  than  the  present 
spelling  of  French  or  German;  it  has  been  ap 
proved  by  many  scientific  students  of  language; 
and  it  has  been  urged  by  authors  as  unlike  as 
Max  Miiller  and  Mark  Twain. 

But  altho  the  claims  of  radical  "fonetic  reform" 
have  been  ably  presented  by  eloquent  advocates 
on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  for  now  many  years, 
they  have  never  succeeded  in  making  any  im 
pression  on  the  general  public;  and  there  are  no 
signs  that  they  are  likely  to  make  any  impression. 
The  stock  that  speaks  the  English  language  is 
not  enslaved  by  logic;  it  is  in  the  habit  of  making 
haste  slowly;  it  prefers  to  get  its  reforms  piece- 
226 


SIMPLIFIED   SPELLING   AND   "  FONETIC    REFORM" 

meal,  a  little  bit  to-day  and  a  little  more  to 
morrow,  as  occasion  serves  and  as  the  event  de 
mands;  it  cherishes  its  traditions;  it  follows 
its  precedents;  and  it  resents  all  suggestion  of 
violent  or  radical  change.  It  is  very  slow  to 
move,  and  before  starting  it  wants  to  see  where 
it  is  going.  And  if  these  are  the  characteristics  of 
the  people  of  Great  Britain  and  the  people  of 
the  United  States,  what  possible  chance  is  there 
for  any  scheme  of  radical  spelling  reform? 

Here,  then,  is  the  dilemma  before  those  who 
want  to  see  our  noble  tongue  kept  fit  for  service 
all  over  the  world.  Our  present  orthography  is 
barbaric  and  wasteful;  so  much  can  hardly  be 
denied  by  any  one  who  has  learnt  how  to  read 
and  write.  And  yet  the  adoption  for  every-day 
use  of  anything  like  real  "fonetic  reform,"  the 
introduction  of  a  scientific  system  and  the  com 
plete  readjustment  of  our  orthography,  is  abso 
lutely  hopeless  of  achievement;  it  stands  outside 
the  sphere  of  practical  politics.  Then  what  can 
be  done?  Can  anything  be  done? 

The  Simplified  Spelling  Board  and  the  Simpli 
fied  Spelling  Society  were  organized  because  their 
members  believed  that  something  ought  to  be 
done  and  that  something  could  be  done.  They 
saw  that  the  spelling  of  English  had  slowly  bet 
tered  itself,  century  after  century,  and  that  illog 
ical  and  barbaric  as  it  is  in  the  twentieth  century 
227 


it  was  not  quite  so  illogical  and  barbaric  as  it 
had  been  in  the  nineteenth  century  and  in  the 
eighteenth.  They  knew  that  this  improvement 
was  very  largely  the  result  of  individual  efforts  to 
simplify  by  striking  out  superfluous  letters  and 
by  bringing  anomalous  spellings  into  conformity 
with  general  rules.  As  Whitney  told  us,  "every 
single  item  of  alteration  of  whatever  kind,  and 
of  whatever  degree  of  importance,  goes  back  to 
some  individual  or  individuals,  who  set  it  in  cir 
culation,  from  whose  example  it  gained  a  wider 
and  a  wider  currency,  until  it  finally  won  general 
assent,  which  is  alone  required  to  make  anything 
in  language  proper  and  authoritative." 

The  members  of  the  Simplified  Spelling  organ 
izations  believe  that  this  process  of  simplification 
can  be  guided  and  made  to  operate  more  swiftly 
and  more  broadly.  They  are  aware  that  most 
English  monosyllables — and  English  is  largely 
a  monosyllabic  language — have  now  a  fairly  sat 
isfactory  spelling,  cant,  for  example,  and  splash, 
and  sum  and  thing.  They  know  also  that  a  very 
heavy  proportion  of  our  polysyllabic  words,  de 
rived  mainly  from  Latin  and  from  Greek,  have 
also  an  orthography  which  was  not  unacceptable, 
eminent,  for  instance,  and  submit  and  biology, 
and  diabolical  and  astronomy.  They  accept  the 
fact  that  probably  nine-tenths  of  our  enormous 
vocabulary  does  not  stand  in  immediate  need 
228 


SIMPLIFIED    SPELLING   AND 

of  much  orthographic  readjustment.  They  think 
that  the  effort  to  improve  might  now  be  confined 
to  the  tenth  of  our  words  which  are  more  ob 
viously  in  need  of  improvement.  They  are  satis 
fied  to  ask  for  only  a  little  at  a  time,  and  to  take 
what  they  can  get,  without  frightening  away  their 
possible  supporters  by  too  large  a  list  of  changes 
all  at  once. 

They  believed  further  that  their  effort  merely  to 
accelerate  that  progressive  simplification — which 
has  been  evident  generation  after  generation- 
would  not  evoke  the  racial  antipathy  to  revolu 
tionary  radicalism  of  any  kind.  Indeed,  they 
hoped  that  this  would  be  acceptable,  as  strictly 
in  accord  with  the  racial  regard  for  precedent. 
What  the  Simplified  Spelling  Board  proposed  to 
ask  this  generation  to  do,  was  precisely  what  the 
preceding  generations  had  done,  one  after  an 
other.  Our  forefathers  had  dropt  the  u  out  of 
governour;  why  should  not  we  drop  the  ugh 
from  the  end  of  though?  An  earlier  century  had 
cut  sunne  and  batte  down  to  sun  and  bat;  why 
should  not  this  century  in  its  turn,  follow  the  good 
example,  and  cut  programme  down  to  program 
and  borough  to  boro? 

In  other  words,  the  Simplified  Spelling  Board 

has  been  establisht  merely  to  continue  and  to 

hasten  a  process  which  has  always  been  at  work 

in  English   orthography.    It  does  not  demand 

229 


that  all  which  might  be  done  shall  be  done  at 
once;  and  it  holds  with  Bismarck  that  "we 
had  better  leave  something  for  our  children  to 
do — or  they  may  be  bored."  What  the  Simpli 
fied  Spelling  Board  proposes  is  not  any  radical 
scheme  of  sweeping  "fonetic  reform"  but  the 
encouragement  of  a  simplification  by  the  omis 
sion  of  useless  letters  and  by  the  broader  appli 
cation  of  analogy — the  same  simplification  which 
no  man  can  fail  to  find  at  work  more  or  less  con 
tinuously  and  more  or  less  intentionally,  since  the 
invention  of  printing.  Any  improvement  is  bet 
ter  than  none;  and  as  Roger  Ascham  remarked 
in  his  'Schoolmaster'  more  than  three  centuries 
ago,  "If  we  must  cleave  to  the  oldest  and  not  the 
best,  we  should  be  eating  acorns  and  wearing  old 
Adam's  pelts."  The  most  vehement  and  the  most 
vociferous  opponents  of  the  proposals  of  the  Sim 
plified  Spellers  are  themselves  employing  number 
less  spellings  simplified  in  the  past;  and  whether 
they  know  it  or  not,  they  are  themselves  simpli 
fied  spellers,  however  much  they  may  resent  the 
reminder. 

These  opponents  may  object  as  much  as  they 
please  to  any  special  simplification  suggested 
by  the  American  Board  or  by  the  British  Society; 
they  may  abuse  that  as  an  instance  of  orthographic 
mayhem;  they  may  hold  it  up  to  scorn  as  an  ab 
horrent  novelty;  and  in  so  doing  they  are  within 
230 


SIMPLIFIED   SPELLING   AND 

their  rights  as  individuals.  But  when  they  go 
beyond  objurgation  against  any  specific  simpli 
fication  and  attack  the  principle  of  simplification 
itself,  they  then  discover  themselves  as  innovators, 
—in  that  they  are  now  opposing  a  principle  which 
has  been  accepted  in  the  past  and  which  has 
brought  about  whatever  slight  improvement  we 
can  discover  in  our  spelling  in  the  twentieth  cen 
tury  over  that  of  our  forefathers  in  the  eighteenth 
century. 

These  objectors  reveal  their  own  failure  to 
understand  what  they  are  talking  about  when 
they  confuse  Simplified  Spelling  with  "fonetic 
reform";  and  as  Lord  Morley  has  remarkt  in 
one  of  his  recent  essays,  "Nothing  makes  men 
reason  so  badly  as  ignorance  of  the  facts."  Per 
haps  it  is  not  too  much  to  suggest  that  the  most 
violent  of  these  objectors  are  disclosing  themselves 
as  disloyal  to  the  language  they  are  pretending  to 
defend,  since  they  are  antagonizing  and  striving 
to  delay  a  modest  effort  to  make  English  fitter 
for  its  impending  adoption  as  a  world-language, 
—that  is  to  say,  as  the  second  tongue  of  all  edu 
cated  men  thruout  the  habitable  globe. 

(1909.) 


231 


THE  QUESTION  OF  THE 
THEATER 


THE  QUESTION  OF  THE  THEATER 

AT  the  close  of  the  memorable  journey  of 
the  Comedie-Franfaise  to  England  in  1878, 
Matthew  Arnold  wrote  a  characteristic  paper 
on  the  'French  Play  in  London,'  in  the  course 
of  which  he  took  occasion  to  declare  that 
"the  pleasure  we  have  had  in  the  visit  of  the 
French  company  is  barren,  unless  it  leaves  us 
with  the  impulse  to  mend  the  condition  of  our 
theater."  He  asserted  that  the  desire  for  the 
drama  is  irresistible,  and  that,  therefore,  we  should 
"organize  the  theater";  and  he  held  up  as  model 
the  organization  of  the  Come'die-Francaise.  He 
advised  that  a  company  of  good  actors  be  formed 
in  London,  and  that  to  this  company  a  theater 
should  be  given,  and  also  a  grant  of  money  from 
the  Science  and  Art  Department.  He  proposed 
that  the  condition  of  this  grant  should  be  an  agree 
ment  on  a  repertory  chosen  out  of  the  works  of 
Shakspere  and  of  the  best  modern  British  dram 
atists;  and  he  added  that  it  would  be  needful 
to  appoint  a  government  Commissioner  to  see 
that  the  terms  of  the  agreement  were  carried  out. 
It  is  now  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  since 
Matthew  Arnold  urged  these  suggestions  with 
all  his  playful  eloquence;  and  as  yet,  neither  in 
235 


THE   QUESTION   OF  THE   THEATER 

Great  Britain  nor  in  the  United  States  has  any 
thing  been  accomplisht  toward  such  an  organ 
ization  of  the  theater  as  he  had  in  view.  But 
the  subject  has  been  incessantly  discust.  Many 
and  fervent  have  been  the  appeals  of  zealous  and 
youthful  spirits,  first,  to  that  intangible  entity 
the  State,  for  a  subsidy,  and  second,  to  that  al 
luring  personality,  the  benevolent  multi-million 
aire,  for  an  endowment.  Fervent  these  appeals 
were,  no  doubt,  but  also  not  a  little  vague;  and, 
perhaps,  this  is  a  chief  reason  why  they  have  failed 
to  persuade.  Indeed,  it  is  not  unfortunate,  even 
for  those  ardently  urging  a  reform,  that  the  man 
who  holds  the  purse-strings  should  never  be 
seduced  by  empty  declamation,  that  he  should 
be  hard-hearted  and  slow-moving,  and  that  he 
should  be  won  over  at  last  only  after  careful  con 
sideration  of  all  the  facts  of  the  case. 

Now,  what  are  the  facts  in  this  case?  What 
are  the  reasons  which  led  Matthew  Arnold  to 
call  upon  his  countrymen  to  "  organize  the  the 
ater"?  Why  is  it  that  there  is  in  England  and 
America  an  insistent  demand  that  the  theater  shall 
be  either  subsidized  by  the  State  or  endowed  by 
the  wealthy?  What  are  the  conditions  of  the 
theater  in  the  English-speaking  countries  which 
call  for  amelioration?  Apparently  the  theater  is 
flourishing;  never  were  there  more  playhouses 
than  there  are  to-day,  and  never  were  these  vari- 
236 


THE  QUESTION  OF  THE  THEATER 

ous  places  of  amusement  more  thickly  thronged 
with  playgoers,  pleased  with  the  entertainment 
proffered  to  them.  There  is  no  denying  the  sump- 
tuousness,  the  propriety,  and  even  the  beauty  of 
the  scenery  and  costumes  and  decorations  set 
before  us  on  the  stage  nowadays.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  we  have  many  opportunities  for  observ 
ing  acting  which  attains  to  a  high  level  of  technical 
accomplishment,  even  if  actual  inspiration  and 
indisputable  genius  are  as  rare  in  the  twentieth 
century  as  they  have  been  in  all  its  predecessors. 
Even  in  the  plays  themselves  there  has  been  of 
late  a  distinct  advance.  Chatter  about  the  decline 
of  the  drama  there  is  now,  as  there  always  has 
been,  and  always  will  be.  Euripides  was  still 
alive  when  Aristophanes  declared  the  decadence 
of  Attic  tragedy;  and  Ben  Jonson  never  hesitated 
to  express  his  low  opinion  of  those  wonderful 
contemporaries  of  his,  whose  bold  dramas  have 
made  the  Elizabethan  reign  the  noblest  epoch  in 
the  history  of  English  literature.  Of  course, 
there  is  no  period  which  would  not  be  crusht  by 
a  comparison  with  that  illumined  with  the  genius 
of  Sophocles  and  with  that  irradiated  by  the  genius 
of  Shakspere.  It  is  unprofitable  ever  to  overpraise 
the  plays  of  our  own  time;  but  it  is  unwise  also 
to  depreciate  them  unduly.  Even  if  the  acted 
drama  of  the  English  language  at  the  beginning 
of  the  twentieth  century  is  not  equal  in  range,  in 
237 


THE   QUESTION  OF  THE  THEATER 

skill,  in  power,  to  the  acted  drama  of  the  French 
language  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
it  has  at  least  freed  itself  from  the  disheartening 
insincerity  which  characterized  the  plays  in  Eng 
lish  that  had  been  adapted  from  the  French. 

As  Matthew  Arnold  pointed  out,  the  result 
of  the  effort  to  adjust  a  plot  caused  by  French 
social  conventions  to  the  conditions  of  English 
life,  was  to  produce  in  the  attentive  observer 
"a  sense  of  incurable  falsity."  So  long  as  the 
prevalent  plays  were  adaptations  of  so  fantastic 
an  unreality,  it  was  very  difficult  to  take  the 
theater  seriously,  or  to  expect  that  the  dramatist 
should  observe  life  faithfully  or  deal  with  it  hon 
estly.  In  the  quarter  of  a  century  since  Matthew 
Arnold  made  his  plea  for  organizing  the  theater, 
this  reproach  has  been  taken  away  from  the 
English-speaking  stage.  Adaptations  from  the 
French  have  almost  disappeared;  and  when  a 
foreign  play  is  now  presented  in  English,  very 
rarely  does  it  masquerade  as  an  English  play.  It 
remains  French  or  German;  it  retains  its  native 
atmosphere;  it  is  a  translation,  not  an  adapta 
tion.  This  is  an  immense  gain;  this  is  the  first 
necessary  step  towards  a  revival  of  public  inter 
est  in  the  drama  of  our  own  language.  Our 
acted  drama  may  be  a  poor  thing,  even  now,  but 
it  is  at  least  our  own;  it  is  no  longer  borrowed 
from  our  neighbor.  Whatever  criticism  we  may 
238 


THE  QUESTION  OF  THE  THEATER 

pass  upon  the  'Aristocracy'  of  Mr.  Bronson 
Howard,  the  '  Gay  Lord  Quex '  of  Mr.  Pinero, 
the  ' Liars'  of  Mr.  H.  A.  Jones,  the  'Alabama' 
of  Mr.  Thomas,  or  the  'Shore  Acres'  of  the  late 
Mr.  Herne — and  it  may  be  that  no  one  of  these 
plays  is  an  impeccable  masterpiece — we  must 
see  in  each  of  them  a  sincere  effort  to  deal  with 
life  at  first  hand. 

If  the  theater  is  thus  prosperous  wherever  the 
English  language  is  spoken,  and  if  the  dramatists 
are  again  striving  to  handle  the  stuff  out  of  which 
alone  literature  can  be  made,  what  need  is  there 
for  any  modification  of  the  situation  ?  Why  can 
not  the  stage  be  let  alone  to  take  care  of  itself? 
What  call  is  there  for  subsidy  or  endowment? 
The  answer  to  these  questions  is  to  be  found  in 
the  statement  that  the  theater  is  now  governed 
too  much  by  purely  commercial  considerations, 
and  that  the  art  of  the  drama  is  the  only  one  of 
the  arts  which  is  compelled  to  pay  its  own  way, 
and  which  is  forced  to  make  its  own  living  under 
conditions  which  limit  its  exertions  to  what  is  im 
mediately  profitable. 

It  is  not  bad  for  the  artist  that  he  has  to  earn  his 
own  bread,  and  that  he  is  bound  to  satisfy  the 
taste  of  his  fellow-man;  and  it  is  not  good  for 
any  art  that  those  who  practise  it  should  be  shel 
tered  and  coddled.  No  disadvantage  has  it  been 
to  us  that  the  two  greatest  of  modern  dramatists, 
239 


THE  QUESTION   OF  THE  THEATER 

Shakspere  and  Moliere,  were  each  of  them 
managers  with  a  direct  interest  in  the  takings  at 
the  door.  No  advantage  was  it  to  anybody  that 
Goethe  was,  by  the  grace  of  the  Grand  Duke, 
made  independent  of  the  public  and  allowed  to 
do  what  he  liked  on  the  stage  of  the  Weimar 
theater,  since  the  result  of  Goethe's  independence 
of  the  public  was  that  the  Weimar  theater  brought 
forth  little  worthy  to  live  on  the  German  stage. 
The  arts  are  democratic,  all  of  them;  but  none 
more  so  than  the  drama,  since  it  is  inconceivable 
without  the  assistance  of  the  people  at  large. 
If  any  proof  were  needed  of  the  insanity  of  the 
Bavarian  king,  it  could  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
he  liked  to  be  the  sole  spectator  of  performances 
in  his  opera-house. 

Yet  the  experience  of  history  seems  to  show 
that  it  is  unwise  to  leave  any  art  wholly  at  the 
mercy  of  the  money- making  motives.  Even  in 
the  English-speaking  countries,  where  more  is 
abandoned  to  private  enterprize  than  is  thought 
advisable  among  the  Latin  races,  galleries  have 
been  built  for  the  proper  exhibition  of  the  works 
of  living  painters  and  sculptors;  and  concert- 
halls  have  been  erected  for  the  proper  performance 
of  orchestral  music.  In  New  York,  for  example, 
— and  only  a  stone's  throw  from  each  other — 
stand  the  Carnegie  Music  Hall  and  the  Vander- 
bilt  Gallery  (of  the  Fine  Arts  Building),  visible 
240 


THE   QUESTION   OF  THE  THEATER 

evidences  of  the  aid  willingly  extended  by  the 
wealthy  to  the  other  arts.  In  Carnegie  Hall, 
in  the  course  of  the  season,  concerts  are  given  by 
three  or  four  different  symphony-orchestras,  the 
continued  existence  of  which  is  conditional  upon 
a  large  subscription  or  on  a  guarantee  fund  sub 
stantially  equivalent  to  a  subsidy.  And  during 
the  same  winter  months,  a  series  of  performances 
of  grand  opera,  in  Italian,  in  French,  and  in  Ger 
man,  is  given  at  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House, 
—performances  made  possible  only  by  a  very  large 
subscription  from  the  box-holders,  and  by  a  reduc 
tion  of  the  rental  from  the  figure  which  the  owners 
of  the  building  would  demand  if  they  sought  sim 
ply  for  a  proper  return  on  the  money  invested. 

If  men  of  means  had  not  chosen  to  sink  their 
money  in  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House  and  in 
Carnegie  Hall;  if  Major  Higginson  were  now  to 
withdraw  his  support  from  the  Boston  Sym 
phony  Orchestra;  and  if  the  public-spirited 
music-lovers  of  Chicago  and  Pittsburg  were  to 
refuse  any  further  subsidy  to  the  orchestras  of 
which  they  are  justly  entitled  to  be  proud;  if 
music  were  to  be  deprived  of  all  artificial  assistance 
and  forced  to  depend  for  existence  solely  upon  the 
working  of  purely  commercial  motives — then 
music  would  be  exactly  in  the  same  position  in 
which  the  drama  is  now.  Good  music  would 
still  be  heard,  it  is  true;  but  we  may  be  certain 
241 


THE  QUESTION  OF  THE  THEATER 

that  there  would  not  be  so  many  performances  as 
there  are  now;  and,  what  is  more  important,  the 
performances  would  not  be  so  adequate  or  so 
satisfactory,  and  the  programs  would  be  more  in 
accordance  with  the  prevailing  taste  of  the  less 
cultivated  portion  of  the  public.  The  managers 
of  concerts  would  be  less  likely  to  risk  upon  their 
programs  either  the  more  austere  of  the  classic 
composers  or  the  more  aggressive  of  the  younger 
musicians;  and  they  would  tend  to  confine  their 
selections  to  a  small  list  of  establisht  favorites. 

Much  has  been  done  for  music;  just  as  much 
has  been  done  in  other  ways  for  painting,  for 
sculpture,  and  for  architecture.  Nothing  at  all 
has  been  done  for  the  drama.  It  is  wholly  de 
pendent  upon  the  law  of  supply  and  demand,  and 
so  long  as  this  is  the  case,  the  manager  will  natu 
rally  seek  to  produce  the  kind  of  play  likely  to 
please  the  most  people.  He  will  perform  it  con 
tinuously,  seven  or  eight  times  a  week  for  as 
many  weeks  as  possible.  He  will  proclaim  its 
merits  as  vehemently  as  he  can;  and  he  will  ad 
vertize  it  very  much  as  a  circus  or  a  sensational 
novel  is  advertized.  He  will  be  prone  to  turn 
away  from  any  kind  of  play  which  is  not  so  likely 
to  please  the  largest  portion  of  the  public,  which 
cannot  be  forced  to  a  long  run,  and  which  cannot 
be  boomed  as  a  freak-fiddler  is  boomed.  His  aim 
will  be  to  give  the  public  what  it  wants. 
242 


THE  QUESTION  OF  THE  THEATER 

In  this  last  phrase  there  lurks  a  fallacy.  There 
is  no  such  entity  as  "the  public"  wanting  a  definite 
thing;  or  else  we  should  not  see  the  Irving-Terry 
company  and  the  Weber-Fields  company  both 
playing  to  crowded  houses  in  the  same  city  at  the 
same  time.  There  are  as  many  separate  publics 
as  there  are  separate  attractions;  these  several 
publics  intersect,  and  every  individual  probably 
belongs  to  more  than  one.  For  example,  there 
is  a  very  large  public  for  Buffalo  Bill's  Wild  West, 
and  there  is  a  far  smaller  public  for  the  symphony 
concerts;  but  of  a  certainty  there  are  a  goodly 
number  of  persons  with  a  catholicity  of  taste 
which  will  enable  them  to  enjoy  both  these  en 
tertainments.  The  public  which  delights  in 
melodrama  and  in  musical  farce  is  enormous; 
whereas  the  public  which  would  care  to  see  a 
performance  of  the  'Oedipus'  of  Sophocles  or 
the  'Ghosts'  of  Ibsen,  is  very  restricted — probably 
it  is  not  more  than  enough  to  fill  a  small  theater 
two  or  three  times  in  the  course  of  a  season.  The 
public  capable  of  a  severe  joy  in  the  beholding 
of  ' Oedipus'  or  of  'Ghosts'  may  be  taken  as  one 
extreme;  and  the  public  which  laughs  hilariously 
at  musical  farce  and  which  thrills  sympathetically 
at  melodrama  may  be  taken  as  the  other;  and 
between  these  are  publics  of  all  sorts  and  of  all 
sizes, — a  limited  public  for  'Pelleas  and  Melis- 
ande,'  a  public  less  limited  for  the  'School  for 
243 


THE   QUESTION   OF  THE   THEATER 

Scandal'  and  for  'As  You  Like  It,'  a  public  fairly 
large  for  '  Hamlet,'  and  a  public  extensive  beyond 
all  belief  for  'Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.'  The  public 
for  broad  farce  is  larger  than  that  for  the  comedy 
of  manners;  and  the  public  for  the  comedy  of 
intrigue,  relieved  by  sentiment,  is  larger  than  the 
public  for  tragedy. 

But  the  fallacy  in  the  phrase  "what  the  public 
wants"  really  matters  little.  Whether  there  is 
one  homogeneous  public  or  whether  there  are  any 
number  of  smaller  and  intersecting  publics  is  of 
no  importance,  so  long  as  the  theater  is  controlled 
solely  by  the  law  of  supply  and  demand  like  any 
other  business.  The  manager  has  to  present  the 
kind  of  play  which  is  calculated  to  please  the 
largest  number  of  possible  spectators,  and  he  will 
be  likely  to  shrink  from  the  kind  of  play  which 
would  appeal  to  a  small  public  only,  which  cannot 
be  forced  into  a  long  run,  and  which  does  not 
lend  itself  to  circus-methods  of  booming.  In  fact, 
the  conditions  of  the  theater  being  what  they  are 
now  in  New  York  and  in  London,  the  wonder  is 
that  the  level  of  the  stage  is  not  lower  than  it  is 
actually,  and  that  the  more  intelligent  playgoers 
ever  have  an  opportunity  to  see  anything  other 
than  spectacle  and  sensation.  That  we  have  a 
chance  now  and  then  to  behold  more  plays  of  a 
more  delicate  workmanship  and  of  a  more  po 
etic  purpose  is  due  partly  to  the  courage  and  the 
244 


THE   QUESTION   OF   THE   THEATER 

liberality  of  certain  of  the  managers,  and  partly 
to  the  honorable  ambition  of  certain  of  the  actors 
and  actresses,  seeking  occasion  for  the  exercise 
of  their  art  in  a  wider  range  of  characters. 

To  those  managers  and  to  these  actors  and 
actresses  we  owe  also  casual  presentations  of  a 
limited  number  of  Shaksperian  plays,  tragic  and 
comic,  and  also  of  a  few  of  the  old  comedies. 
But  these  performances  of  the  classics  of  English 
dramatic  literature  are  infrequent;  and,  moreover, 
they  are  not  altogether  satisfactory,  since  it  is 
rare  to  find  the  smaller  characters  in  the  hands  of 
trained  and  competent  performers.  In  the  days 
of  the  two  patent  theaters  in  London,  when  Drury 
Lane  and  Covent  Garden  had  a  monopoly  of  the 
serious  drama,  the  cast  of  a  Shaksperian  comedy 
was  extraordinarily  strong;  and  even  in  New  York 
a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  the  late  Mr.  Augustin 
Daly  had  a  company  so  large  that  on  one  occasion 
it  presented  the  'School  for  Scandal'  at  the  Fifth 
Avenue  Theater,  while  the  performers  not  needed 
in  that  play  went  over  to  Newark  to  perform 
'London  Assurance.'  But  the  monopoly  of  the 
patent  theaters  in  London  was  abolished  long 
ago;  and  the  large  companies,  such  as  Mr. 
Daly  kept  together  for  a  score  of  years,  have  been 
broken  up.  Plays  are  now  presented  by  com 
panies,  every  performer  in  which  was  specially 
engaged  for  the  specific  part  he  has  to  act;  and 
245 


THE   QUESTION   OF   THE   THEATER 

altho  this  practise  has  advantages  of  its  own,  it 
does  not  tend  to  facilitate  the  reviving  of  the 
masterpieces  of  our  older  drama. 

Thus  the  drama  is  at  a  grave  disadvantage  as 
compared  with  the  other  arts,  owing  to  the  ab 
sence  of  all  outside  aid.  There  are  public  libra 
ries  for  the  preservation  of  the  masterpieces  of 
literature,  and  there  are  public  galleries  and  pub 
lic  museums  for  the  proper  display  of  the  master 
pieces  of  painting  and  of  sculpture.  There  is 
no  public  theater  where  the  masterpieces  of  the 
drama  are  presented  for  our  study  and  for  our 
stimulation.  It  is  true  that  we  can  read  the  great 
plays  of  the  great  dramatists;  we  can  read  them 
by  ourselves  at  our  own  firesides;  but  how  pale 
is  a  perusal  compared  with  a  performance,  how 
inadequate,  how  unsatisfactory !  Perhaps  a  mere 
reading  may  enable  us  to  appreciate  some  of  the 
purely  literary  beauties  of  the  play;  but  it  will 
hardly  help  us  to  apprehend  its  essential  dra 
matic  qualities, — the  very  qualities  which  give 
the  play  its  true  value,  and  which  stand  revealed 
at  once  when  the  play  is  presented  in  the  theater. 

A  true  drama,  comic  or  tragic,  witty  or  poetic, 
is  always  conceived  by  its  author  in  terms  of  the 
theater;  he  means  it  to  be  performed  by  players, 
in  a  playhouse,  before  playgoers.  And  every 
true  drama  loses  more  or  less  of  its  power  when 
it  is  deprived  of  the  theater,  of  the  actors,  and  of 
246 


THE   QUESTION   OF   THE   THEATER 

the  audience.  Recent  revivals  have  proved  that 
many  a  Greek  tragedy  and  many  a  Latin  comedy, 
remote  as  these  may  be  from  our  modern  modes  of 
thought  and  disestablisht  as  their  technic  may 
seem  to  us  to-day,  can  shake  off  the  dust  of  the 
book-shelves  and  start  to  life  again  with  surprizing 
vitality,  when  it  is  set  before  us  on  a  stage  by 
actors  of  flesh  and  blood.  Whatever  the  im 
pression  produced  upon  the  reader  in  the  library 
by  'Macbeth'  and  'As  You  Like  It,'  by  the  'Al 
chemist'  and  'A  New  Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts/ 
by  the  'School  for  Scandal'  and  'She  Stoops  to 
Conquer,'  it  is  not  so  deep,  not  so  varied,  not  so 
lasting  as  that  produced  upon  the  spectator  in  the 
theater.  The  frequent  and  liberal  revival  of  the 
masterpieces  of  dramatic  literature,  English  and 
foreign,  ancient  and  modern,  would  be  very  ex 
pensive.  In  a  pecuniary  sense  it  would  not  pay, 
—any  more  than  the  exhibition  of  Rembrandt's 
'Gilder'  would  pay  as  a  private  enterprize. 

So  long  as  the  theater  is  governed  chiefly  by 
commercial  considerations,  we  have  no  right  to 
expect  managers  to  take  a  great  risk  for  a  very 
doubtful  reward.  Most  of  the  managers  will  go 
on  appealing  to  the  largest  public  with  melodrama 
and  with  musical  farce;  they  will  strive  to  make 
money  out  of  sensation  and  spectacle;  and  in  so 
doing  they  will  be  wholly  without  blame.  From 
a  minority  of  the  managers,  men  of  a  wiser  liber- 
247 


THE   QUESTION   OF   THE   THEATER 

ality  and  a  finer  taste,  and  from  actors  of  a  lofty 
aspiration,  we  shall  get  now  and  again  a  modern 
play  of  a  subtler  significance  and  an  old  play  of 
a  more  poetic  beauty;  and  for  these  guerdons  we 
ought  honestly  to  be  grateful.  So  long  as  the 
theater  is  left  to  the  operation  of  the  law  of  sup 
ply  and  demand,  it  is  idle  to  look  for  a  manager 
who  will  make  it  his  business  to  produce  plays 
which  he  knows  cannot  be  forced  into  a  long  run, 
and  who  will  take  pleasure  in  presenting  the 
masterpieces  of  dramatic  literature  as  they  ought 
to  be  presented.  Without  a  subsidy  or  an  en 
dowment  or  financial  support  of  some  kind,  he 
could  hardly  hope  to  pay  his  expenses. 

A  subsidy  from  the  State  was  what  Matthew 
Arnold  proposed,  and  he  suggested  the  establish 
ment  of  a  British  Theater  on  the  model  of  the 
The'atre  Francais.  Most  of  the  Parisian  the 
aters  are  private  enterprizes,  but  four  of  them  are 
more  or  less  supported  by  the  national  govern 
ment,  two  for  music,  the  Ope*ra  and  the  Ope'ra- 
Comique,  and  two  for  the  drama,  the  Theatre 
Francais  and  the  Oddon, — the  official  title  of  the 
latter  being  the  Second  Theatre  Francais.  The 
Theatre  Francais  is  a  sumptuous  playhouse  owned 
by  the  State  and  assigned  rent-free,  with  a  large 
annual  subsidy  also,  to  the  Come'die-Francaise, 
a  commonwealth  of  the  chief  actors  and  actresses, 
who  govern  themselves  more  or  less  under  the 
248 


THE   QUESTION   OF  THE   THEATER 

control  of  a  director  appointed  by  the  government. 
The  associates  elect  their  successors;  they  en 
gage  the  subordinate  performers  on  salary;  and 
they  divide  among  themselves  the  annual  profits 
of  their  enterprize.  They  are  expected  to  remain 
members  as  long  as  they  are  fit  for  service;  and 
then  they  can  take  a  farewell  benefit  and  retire 
on  a  pension.  They  have  various  committees  of 
their  own;  but  they  generally  leave  abundant 
power  to  the  director,  who  is  the  executive,  and 
who  is  also  a  sharer  in  the  profits. 

Altho  it  has  had  its  ups  and  downs,  the  Theatre 
Francais  is  the  foremost  theater  of  the  world ;  and 
its  company  is  incomparably  large  and  gifted, 
most  of  the  actors  and  actresses  having  been 
trained  at  the  Conservatory,  and  having  been 
chosen  because  of  their  skill  in  interpreting  the 
tragedies  of  Corneille  and  Racine  and  the  com 
edies  of  Moliere  and  Beaumarchais.  It  gives 
seven  or  eight  performances  a  week,  and  the 
newest  play  is  never  repeated  more  than  four 
times  in  that  period,  and  rarely  more  than  three. 
One  or  two  performances  a  week  are  always  de 
voted  to  the  classical  drama,  comic  or  tragic;  and 
any  one  spending  a  single  winter  in  Paris  may 
have  occasion  to  see  half  of  the  acknowledged 
masterpieces  of  the  French  stage.  Upon  the  re 
maining  nights  are  presented  modern  pieces  chosen 
from  a  vast  and  varied  repertory.  Comparatively 
249 


THE   QUESTION   OF   THE  THEATER 

few  of  the  best  plays  of  the  last  half-century  were 
originally  produced  at  the  Theatre  Francais; 
but  this  theater  took  them  over  after  they  had 
proved  their  value  on  other  stages.  Altho 
the  Theatre  Francais  is  continually  experiment 
ing  with  new  pieces,  in  prose  and  in  verse,  by  the 
foremost  living  French  dramatists,  its  chief  func 
tion  is  rather  to  be  a  museum  of  the  French  drama, 
ancient  and  modern;  and  its  main  reliance  is 
more  upon  its  repertory  than  upon  its  novel 
ties. 

The  Come'die-Francaise  is  an  institution  which 
we  may  easily  envy,  but  which  we  should  find  it 
very  difficult  to  imitate.  It  is  what  it  is,  because 
it  is  a  growth  of  more  than  two  centuries.  It 
is  one  of  the  only  two  institutions  of  the  Monarchy 
which  survived  the  Revolution  with  undiminisht 
prestige;  the  other  is  the  French  Academy.  It 
was  not  a  creation  of  the  king's,  even  when  it  was 
founded;  it  was  only  the  consolidation,  under 
royal  control,  of  three  companies  of  actors  already 
existing  as  private  enterprizes.  Even  now,  it  is 
not  so  much  governed  by  its  statutes  as  it  is  ruled 
by  its  traditions;  and  we  cannot  hope  to  ex 
temporize  traditions.  If  it  did  not  now  exist, 
we  may  doubt  whether  it  would  be  possible  to 
establish  it  to-day,  even  in  France,  where  every 
body  is  trained  to  expect  governmental  super 
vision  and  support  for  all  the  arts.  Still  more  may 
250 


THE  QUESTION  OF  THE  THEATER 

we  doubt  whether  the  result  would  not  have 
been  sadly  disappointing  if  the  British  had  taken 
Matthew  Arnold's  advice  a  score  of  years  ago 
and  had  formed  a  company  of  actors,  assigning 
to  this  body  a  theater  in  London,  a  grant  from 
the  Science  and  Art  Department,  and  a  govern 
ment  Commissioner.  As  Bismarck  said,  "you 
cannot  ripen  fruit  by  setting  lamps  under  the 
tree."  No  worthy  rival  of  the  Come'die-Francaise 
could  be  treated  off-hand  by  mere  fiat. 

But  Matthew  Arnold  must  have  known  how 
very  unlikely  it  was  that  any  attention  would 
be  paid  to  his  advice.  Indeed,  we  who  speak 
English  need  not  waste  our  time  in  asking  for  aid 
for  the  theater  from  the  government.  We  shall 
not  get  it,  no  matter  how  insistent  our  demand. 
And  if  we  in  America  are  wise  enough  to  consider 
the  situation  carefully,  we  shall  not  seek  govern 
ment  aid;  because,  if  we  were  to  get  it,  the  last 
state  of  the  drama  might  be  worse  than  the  first. 
In  the  one  art  in  which  the  government  has  had  to 
take  an  interest,  and  upon  which  it  may  even 
have  exerted  some  influence,  the  result  has  only 
too  often  been  sadly  unsatisfactory,  as  all  will 
admit  who  recall  the  pitifully  pretentious  United 
States  Building  set  amid  the  beautiful  palaces 
of  the  Chicago  Exhibition.  Altho,  as  a  people, 
we  Americans  seem  to  have  a  remarkable  aptitude 
for  art,  we  are  as  yet  untrained  to  appreciate  it; 
251 


THE   QUESTION   OF   THE   THEATER 

and  we  are  as  yet  unwilling  to  pay  proper  re 
spect  to  expert  opinion. 

The  civil  service  of  the  nation  and  of  many  of 
the  state  governments  is  now  highly  efficient; 
but  the  civil  service  of  most  of  our  cities  is  in  a 
less  satisfactory  condition;  and  it  is  from  the  city, 
rather  than  from  the  state  or  the  nation,  that  a 
state-aided  theater  would  expect  its  support.  It 
is  true  that,  even  in  the  cities,  the  outlook  is  en 
couraging  and  the  foul  atmosphere  of  the  spoils- 
system  is  lifting;  but  it  has  not  now  been  lifted 
entirely;  and  no  lover  of  the  drama  would  face 
with  composure  the  prospect  of  a  municipal  the 
ater  in  New  York,  where  Tammany  could  turn 
it  over  to  the  control  of  some  ignorant  spoilsman. 
But  no  more  words  need  be  wasted  in  considering 
the  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  a  theater 
supported  by  the  government,  as  the  Theatre 
Francais  is  in  France.  Such  a  discussion  is  aca 
demic  only,  since  in  the  present  state  of  opinion 
among  the  peoples  that  speak  English,  the  debate 
can  hardly  have  any  practical  result. 

It  is  not  by  seeking  government  aid  that  the 
problem  of  the  theater  can  be  solved  in  the  United 
States  or  in  Great  Britain.  Those  who  wish  to  do 
something  for  the  drama  must  rely  on  themselves, 
taking  pattern  by  those  who  have  been  able  to 
accomplish  wonders  for  the  elevation  of  music. 
When  this  decision  is  once  reacht  the  question 
252 


THE  QUESTION  OF  THE  THEATER 

is  easier  of  answer.  What  is  it  we  really  want, 
after  all?  We  want  to  find  a  retort  to  the  man 
ager  who  tells  us  that  he  cannot  afford  to  attempt 
certain  more  delicate  forms  of  dramatic  art,  or  to 
present  the  masterpieces  of  the  drama  as  they 
ought  to  be  presented.  We  want  to  help  this 
manager  to  accomplish  that  which  the  existing 
purely  commerical  conditions  of  the  theater  pre 
vent  him  from  attempting.  What  has  to  be 
done  is  to  come  to  the  aid  of  the  drama,  just  as 
the  owners  of  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House 
came  to  the  aid  of  the  opera.  The  opera  in  New 
York  is  still  a  private  enterprize,  but  it  would  be 
difficult  to  present  the  music-drama,  with  all 
the  parts  taken  by  singers  of  wide  renown,  if  the 
manager  was  not  sustained  by  the  heavy  sub 
scriptions,  and  especially  by  a  release  of  the  full 
rental  which  the  owners  of  the  edifice  would  ex 
pect  if  they  had  been  governed  solely  by  the  desire 
to  get  the  largest  possible  return  for  the  money 
invested. 

The  same  problem  presented  itself  in  Vienna 
and  in  Berlin,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  there  were 
state-aided  theaters  in  both  cities;  and  the  solu 
tion  discovered  by  the  Germans  is  at  the  service  of 
the  Americans  and  the  British.  It  is  very  simple, 
but  it  is  perfectly  satisfactory.  A  body  of  sub 
scribers  raises  a  sum  of  money  sufficient  to  pay 
the  rent  of  a  theater,  and  they  then  turn  the  the- 
253 


THE   QUESTION   OF   THE   THEATER 

ater  over  rent-free  to  a  manager  who  will  pledge 
himself  to  conduct  it  along  certain  lines,  and  to 
accord  certain  privileges  to  the  subscribers.  The 
manager  will  try  to  make  the  theater  pay  him  a 
profit,  and  he  will  try  to  attract  the  public;  but 
it  will  be  rather  the  smaller  public  that  likes  the 
better  class  of  play  than  the  larger  public  that  is 
more  easily  pleased  by  sensation  and  by  spectacle. 
With  a  subsidy  equivalent  to  his  rental,  the  man 
ager  would  bind  himself  to  give  up  the  habit  of 
unbroken  runs, — the  practice  of  acting  the  same 
play  six  and  seven  and  eight  times  a  week.  He 
would  be  able  to  return  to  the  earlier  custom  of 
the  English-speaking  theater, — that  of  a  nightly 
change  of  bill,  such  as  we  still  expect  at  the  opera, 
and  such  as  we  find  at  the  Theatre  Francais  in 
Paris,  at  the  Lessing  Theater  in  Berlin,  and  at  the 
Volks-theater  in  Vienna. 

Under  these  conditions  a  play  might  still  have 
a  very  long  run,  but  its  run  would  not  be  com 
pacted  within  a  brief  period.  Every  new  piece 
and  every  important  revival  would  at  first  appear 
on  the  bills  for  three  of  the  seven  performances 
or  even  for  four;  and  then  as  its  attractive  power 
waned,  it  would  drop  down  to  two  performances 
a  week,  perhaps,  and  finally  to  one  a  fortnight. 
Thus  two  or  even  three  different  plays  might  be 
running  at  the  same  time,  as  is  the  case  now  at 
the  Theatre  Francais,  where  the  *  Monde  ou  Ton 
254 


THE   QUESTION   OF   THE   THEATER 

s'ennuie'  attained  its  five-hundredth  perform 
ance  about  ten  years  after  it  was  first  produced, 
and  where  it  can  still  be  seen  every  winter.  Thus 
it  would  be  possible  to  bring  out  plays  of  delicate 
texture  or  of  historical  interest,  certain  to  attract 
for  a  dozen  or  a  score  of  performances,  but  not 
likely  to  draw  full  houses  for  a  month  at  a  time. 
If  the  manager  was  wisely  chosen  and  if  the 
contract  with  him  was  for  a  term  of  years,  three 
at  least,  or  five,  with  the  understanding  that  it 
would  be  renewed  certainly  if  his  management  had 
approved  itself  to  the  subscribers, — then  much 
should  be  left  to  his  discretion.  The  contract 
would  debar  him  from  performing  the  more  vio 
lent  melodrama  or  the  lighter  forms  of  farce;  and 
might  require  him  to  revive  every  season  two  or 
three  Shaksperian  plays,  either  comic  or  tragic,  and 
two  or  three  of  the  older  comedies  of  our  language. 
He  would  not  be  required,  or  even  expected,  to 
mount  these  plays  as  elaborately  or  as  expensively 
as  is  the  custom  when  the  appeal  to  the  love  of 
spectacle  is  an  approved  method  of  pleasing  the 
unthinking  crowd.  And  these  standard  plays, 
once  produced  with  scenery  and  costumes  and 
properties,  sufficient  but  not  extravagant,  would 
be  kept  in  stock  ready  for  performance  at  any  time 
during  the  season  at  a  week's  notice.  At  first, 
of  course,  the  repertory  would  not  be  large,  but 
it  would  become  more  varied  and  richer  year  by 
255 


THE   QUESTION   OF   THE   THEATER 

year.  The  manager  would  be  ever  on  the  look 
out  for  the  best  modern  plays,  American  and 
British,  French  and  German.  He  would  be 
able  also  to  select  from  the  large  stock  of  pieces 
written  in  our  language  during  the  past  twenty 
years  which  are  unfamiliar  to  the  latest  generation 
of  playgoers.  His  aim  would  be  to  get  together 
a  repertory  of  plays,  old  and  new,  which  would 
make  him  somewhat  independent  in  case  the 
actual  novelties  he  produced  should  not  prove 
attractive.  A  solid  repertory  is  invaluable  to  a 
manager;  it  is  to  him  what  a  reserve- fund  is  to 
a  banker. 

To  do  justice  to  so  varied  a  repertory,  a  large 
and  competent  company  of  actors  and  actresses 
would  be  required, — not  stars,  of  course,  but 
ambitious  and  accomplisht  performers.  There 
would  be  no  need  to  pay  extravagant  salaries,  as 
an  engagement  in  such  a  theater  would  soon 
be  esteemed  an  honor.  Furthermore,  the  actors 
would  be  spared  the  wear  and  tear  of  a  succession 
of  " one-night  stands";  and  they  would  also  en 
joy  the  luxury  of  a  home.  The  frequent  change 
of  bill  would  tend  to  decrease  the  unwillingness 
of  young  actors  and  actresses  to  appear  in  parts 
they  might  deem  unworthy  of  them,  an  unwilling 
ness  which  has  some  justification  under  the  exist 
ing  conditions,  when  a  character  may  have  to  be 
sustained  for  a  hundred  times  in  succession. 
256 


THE   QUESTION   OF   THE   THEATER 

But  when  the  bill  changes  every  night,  a  per 
former  sure  of  a  good  part  on  Monday  and  on 
Wednesday  is  less  strenuous  in  his  objection  to 
performing  a  part  not  so  good  on  Tuesday.  The 
accumulation  of  a  repertory  would  thus  tend  to 
strengthen  the  casts  of  the  more  important  plays; 
and  there  might  even  be  developt  in  time  a 
disinterestedness  like  that  displayed  in  the  fa 
mous  Meiningen  company,  where  the  foremost 
actors  were  accustomed  to  appear  in  the  smallest 
parts. 

If  such  a  theater  were  to  be  establisht  in 
New  York,  its  season  should  be  at  least  eight 
months  long.  Perhaps  the  manager  might  be 
allowed  the  privilege  of  taking  the  company  to 
other  cities  during  the  summer  months;  but  the 
wisdom  of  this  may  be  doubted;  and  perhaps 
a  part  of  the  rental  might  be  earned  by  leasing 
the  playhouse  itself  during  the  summer  months 
to  some  other  manager  for  the  performance  of 
lighter  summer  plays.  But,  if  possible,  it  would 
be  best  to  keep  the  theater  closed  except  when 
its  own  company  was  playing  in  it,  and  not  to 
let  the  company  play  anywhere  else.  If  possible, 
also,  it  would  be  desirable  to  build  a  special  the 
ater  as  soon  as  the  success  of  the  scheme  was 
assured, — a  special  theater  more  spacious  and 
more  comfortable  both  before  and  behind  the 
curtain  than  any  now  existing  in  New  York. 
257 


THE   QUESTION   OF   THE   THEATER 

The  house  should  not  be  too  large  for  the  subtler 
passages  of  comedy;  but  its  lobbies  and  its  aisles 
and  its  seats  should  all  be  upon  a  generous  scale. 
If  the  theater  could  succeed  in  accustoming  a  cer 
tain  body  of  constant  playgoers  to  feel  at  home 
within  its  walls,  special  nights  might  be  set  apart 
for  the  subscribers,  like  the  Tuesdays  of  the 
Theatre  Francais,  to  attend  which  is  a  point  of 
honor  in  the  fashionable  world  of  Paris. 

Those  who  undertake  to  carry  out  any  such 
scheme  as  is  here  suggested  will  have  to  face  one 
serious  difficulty,  and  they  will  have  to  avoid 
one  grave  danger.  The  difficulty  will  be  that  of 
finding  a  fit  manager,  who  must  be  a  man  of  taste, 
of  tact,  of  experience,  of  executive  ability,  and  of 
sufficient  means  to  support  the  enterprize.  The 
danger  will  be  that  of  yielding  to  the  assaults  of 
the  cranks  and  of  the  freaks,  who  will  denounce 
any  effort  to  come  to  the  aid  of  the  drama  which 
does  not  promise  to  satisfy  their  demands.  To 
appeal  successfully  to  the  intelligent  public,  the 
promoters  of  a  scheme  like  this  must  avoid  all 
pretentious  affectation  of  "elevating  the  theater" 
and  of  encouraging  only  the  poetic  drama.  They 
must  refrain  from  all  promises  to  bring  out  the 
more  or  less  dramatic  poems  of  Browning  and  of 
Maeterlinck,  or  to  push  forward  the  darker  pict 
ures  of  life  shown  in  the  dramas  of  Ibsen  and 
Hauptmann.  They  must  not  expect  to  discover 

258 


THE   QUESTION   OF   THE   THEATER 

new  dramatists;  and  they  need  count  on  no  aid 
from  the  mere  men  of  letters,  who,  as  such,  have 
no  more  knowledge  of  the  theater  than  the  paint 
ers  have.  In  other  words,  the  promoters  of  this 
scheme  ought  to  be  practical  men,  taking  a 
common-sense  view  and  trying  to  improve  the 
conditions  of  the  actual  theater.  They  should  look 
upward,  but  they  should  not  aim  too  high  at  first. 

These  suggestions  may  seem  very  commonplace; 
and  it  may  be  confest  at  once  that  they  are  not 
epoch-making.  They  do  not  point  toward  any 
theatrical  Utopia,  nor  do  they  promise  any  dra 
matic  millennium.  They  propose  to  make  an  easy 
beginning,  in  the  belief  that  the  best  way  to  get 
the  attention  and  the  assistance  of  the  public- 
spirited  is  to  show  that  an  improvement  is  actually 
possible.  When  interest  is  aroused  by  the  reali 
zation  of  a  modest  program  such  as  is  here  set 
forth,  then  it  will  be  time  to  be  more  ambitious. 
If  the  theater  here  outlined  were  successfully 
establisht  in  New  York  and  if  it  had  proved  its 
utility,  the  first  step  would  have  been  taken  along 
the  right  path,— at  the  end  of  which  there  might 
loom  an  American  rival  of  the  Theatre  Francais. 
This  is  a  prediction  which  one  need  not  be  afraid 
to  make,  in  spite  of  George  Eliot's  remark  that, 
"  among  all  forms  of  mistake,  prophecy  is  the 
most  gratuitous." 

(1902.) 

259 


PERSUASION  AND  CONTROVERSY 


PERSUASION  AND  CONTROVERSY 

A  FEW  years  ago  a  colonel  of  the  Civil  War, 
who  is  now  a  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States,  delivered  a  Memorial  Day 
address  on  the  '  Soldier's  Faith/  in  which  he  sug 
gested  that  it  is  perhaps  "not  vain  for  us  to  tell 
the  new  generation  what  we  learnt  in  our  day 
and  what  we  still  believe — that  the  joy  of  life  is 
living,  is  to  put  out  all  one's  powers  as  far  as  they 
will  go,  and  the  measure  of  power  is  obstacles  over 
come;  to  ride  boldly  at  what  is  in  front  of  you,  be 
it  fence  or  enemy;  to  pray  not  for  comfort  but  for 
combat;  to  keep  the  soldier's  faith  against  the 
doubts  of  civil  life,  more  besetting  and  harder  to 
overcome  than  all  the  misgivings  of  the  battle 
field." 

It  will  be  a  sorry  day  for  us  when  words  like 
these  of  Mr.  Justice  Holmes  fail  to  arouse  an 
echo  in  the  hearts  of  our  young  men. 

For  never  land  long  lease  of  empire  won 

Whose  sons  sat  silent  when  base  deeds  were  done. 

When  the  youth  of  America  is  ready  to  seek  com 
fort  and  to  shrink  from  combat,  then  the  end  will 
be  near,  and  society  will  stagnate  into  a  morass 
of  moral  malaria.  Life  is  neither  nirvana  nor 

263 


PERSUASION   AND   CONTROVERSY 

chaos;  it  is  a  never-ending  struggle  toward  the 
Promised  Land;  and  no  sooner  have  we  topt 
one  hill  than  another  still  higher  rises  before  us, 
which  we  shall  find  the  easier  to  climb  since 
our  muscles  have  been  hardened  by  the  earlier 
effort.  No  sooner  is  one  victory  won  than  there 
looms  large  before  us  the  next  conquest  to  be 
undertaken.  There  is  never  a  truce  in  the  fight 
ing,  and  never  a  season  when  the  armor  may  be 
laid  aside.  But  of  a  truth  the  joy  of  living  is  in 
the  putting  forth  of  all  our  power  in  overcoming 
the  obstacles  which  are  more  abundant  and  more 
difficult  in  civil  life  than  on  the  battlefield,  as  the 
soldier-judge  declared.  Yet  the  more  abundant 
they  may  be  and  the  more  difficult,  the  keener  is 
the  zest  of  combat,  and  the  less  worthy  is  the 
comfort  which  might  come  to  us  from  giving  up 
the  struggle. 

If,  however,  there  is  a  cause  in  behalf  of  which 
it  is  worth  while  to  battle,  surely  also  it  will  be 
worth  while  to  learn  how  to  wage  the  war.  Ardent 
youth  is  swift  to  enter  on  a  civic  campaign,  often 
without  training  and  without  taking  time  to 
form  a  plan,  altho  even  the  youngest  of  us  knows 
that  the  military  instruction  at  West  Point  ex 
tends  over  four  years  and  that  it  teaches  only  the 
elements  of  the  art  of  war.  If  it  is  true  that  the 
conflicts  of  civil  life  are  more  exhausting  than 
those  in  which  the  soldier  engages,  and  that  the 
264 


PERSUASION   AND   CONTROVERSY 

manuvers  of  the  enemy  are  more  baffling,  then 
is  there  an  obvious  need  of  education  for  those 
who  are  undertaking  a  civic  struggle.  They  go 
forth  to  contend  with  evil,  by  calling  the  attention 
of  the  public  to  the  impending  danger  and  by 
awakening  the  interest  of  good  citizens  in  the 
cause  in  which  they  are  enlisted. 

Here  it  is  that  a  military  metaphor  becomes 
misleading.  Altho  it  is  our  duty  to  wrestle  with 
wrong  and  to  overcome  it,  we  can  win  the  fight 
only  with  the  weapons  of  peace;  and  of  these  the 
most  important  is  persuasion.  We  can  achieve 
our  end  only  by  so  presenting  our  case  as  to  bring 
over  to  our  opinion  the  majority  of  our  fellow- 
citizens.  Undue  aggressiveness  is  wholly  out  of 
place;  it  will  never  attract,  it  will  always  repel. 
No  doubt  the  actual  adversary  must  be  faced 
boldly;  but  there  is  rarely  any  real  chance  of 
converting  him,  for  he  is  rooted  in  his  own  super 
stition,  and  he  has  his  own  reasons  for  the  faith 
that  is  in  him.  It  is  not  the  opponent  who  stands 
up  against  us  that  we  are  striving  to  convince, 
since  his  case  is  hopeless.  It  is  to  the  bystanders 
that  every  appeal  must  be  addrest,  to  those  who 
are  looking  on  idly  and  without  attention.  If 
their  interest  can  be  aroused,  if  they  can  be  con 
verted  to  our  view,  then  our  adversary  is  beaten, 
even  if  he  is  stubborn  to  the  end;  for  then  the 
majority  is  ours,  and  he  is  only  one  of  a  shrinking 
265 


PERSUASION  AND  CONTROVERSY 

minority.  This  is  an  aspect  often  overlookt  by 
men  who  are  naturally  combative  and  who  are 
lacking  in  the  sympathetic  appeal  which  wins 
adherents;  they  spend  all  their  energy  in  the 
grapple  with  the  individual  advocate  of  the  other 
side,  paying  little  heed  to  the  duty  of  persuad 
ing  those  who  are  not  hostile,  but  only  indifferent. 
Sometimes  it  seems  as  tho  their  interest  was 
rather  in  the  argumentative  duel  than  in  the  final 
decision  of  the  debate. 

Only  those  who  have  taken  active  part  in  urg 
ing  an  improvement  or  in  assaulting  an  evil  ever 
realize  how  difficult  it  is  to  awaken  the  attention 
of  the  general  public  in  behalf  of  any  particular 
cause,  and  how  protracted  and  wearisome  a  task 
it  is  to  arouse  any  real  interest  in  favor  of  it.  The 
human  units  who  make  up  the  general  public 
know  little  or  nothing  about  any  one  topic,  and 
they  seem  to  care  less.  They  have  each  of  them 
their  own  traditions,  their  own  prejudices,  their 
own  proportion  of  conservatism,  their  own  dis 
trust  of  innovation.  They  have  a  strong  desire 
to  let  well  enough  alone  and  to  keep  to  the  good 
old  ways.  Yet  they  are  not  resolutely  hostile  to 
any  new  proposal;  they  simply  fail  to  see  the 
necessity  for  it  or  to  seize  the  significance  of  it. 
They  are  open  to  conviction,  if  you  can  once  get 
them  to  listen  to  you  while  you  show  cause  why 
your  opinion  should  be  adopted.  They  are  all  of 
266 


PERSUASION   AND  CONTROVERSY 

them  engaged  in  minding  their  own  business; 
and  they  are  loth  to  lend  an  ear  to  any  one  who 
asks  them  to  listen  to  argument  or  even  to  evi 
dence. 

Yet  it  is  these  human  units  who  are  to  be  made 
to  listen,  who  are  to  be  won  over,  who  are  to  be 
awakened  from  careless  inattention  and  aroused 
to  active  interest.  Whoever  applies  himself  to 
this  labor  of  love  must  possess  his  soul  in  patience 
and  curb  his  temper  with  firmness.  He  must  put 
up  a  good  fight  against  the  defenders  of  the  con 
dition  which  he  is  attacking,  but  he  ought  not  to 
waste  his  strength  mainly  upon  them.  He  must 
never  let  a  delight  in  controversy  tempt  him  to 
forget  that  his  chief  duty  is  not  to  argue  with  the 
other  side,  but  to  persuade  the  men  who  are  tak 
ing  no  part  in  the  dispute — the  men  who  are  ready 
enough  to  dismiss  the  matter  from  their  minds, 
and  who  are  prompt  to  cry  "a  plague  o'  both 
your  houses."  These  are  the  very  men  whose 
support,  if  only  it  can  once  be  secured,  will  make 
success  certain.  Whenever  they  can  be  allured 
into  listening  to  the  facts,  they  are  swift  enough 
in  coming  to  a  decision  on  the  merits  of  the  case; 
and  when  public  opinion  has  once  been  created 
in  favor  of  a  cause,  all  the  protests  of  its  oppo 
nents  are  useless  and  hopeless.  There  is  no  need 
to  waste  time  in  answering  the  arguments  of  the 
other  side  after  the  public  has  made  up  its  mind. 
267 


PERSUASION   AND   CONTROVERSY 

It  is  not  really  argument  which  is  effective;  it 
is  information.  If  once  you  can  induce  the  pub 
lic  to  believe  that  here  is  something  that  they 
ought  to  know  about,  if  once  you  can  get  them 
to  turn  aside  from  their  own  work  long  enough 
to  take  in  a  plain  statement  of  fact,  then  the  rest 
is  easy.  But  to  get  them  to  listen  at  all  is  not 
easy;  it  is  very  hard  indeed,  and  it  cannot  be 
done  in  a  hurry.  It  can  be  done  only  by  patient 
and  unceasing  effort,  which  profits  by  every  occa 
sion,  and  which  neglects  no  opportunity. 

In  this  first  approach  nothing  is  more  important 
than  an  unassuming  manner.  If  you  want  to 
win  the  public  to  listen,  you  must  be  firm,  of 
course,  but  you  must  not  be  condescending;  for 
there  is  nothing  that  human  nature  resents  more 
quickly  than  being  addrest  in  words  of  one  syl 
lable,  as  tho  it  was  infantile  in  understanding. 
And  as  you  must  not  assume  superiority,  so  you 
must  avoid  the  domineering  tone  and  the  ag 
gressive  attitude  which  only  too  many  reformers 
are  prone  to  adopt.  For  example,  there  is  little 
doubt  that  the  ineffectiveness  of  Ruskin's  eloquent 
crying  aloud  in  the  wilderness  was  due  largely 
to  his  shrill  scolding  and  to  his  contemptuous 
bullying.  As  the  late  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  pointed 
out,  "the  arrogance  of  Ruskin's  language  .  .  . 
is  one  of  the  awkward  consequences  of  being  an 
inspired  prophet,"  since  "it  is  implied  in  your 
268 


PERSUASION  AND   CONTROVERSY 

very  position  that  your  opponents  are  without 
an  essential  mental  faculty."  Over-emphasis 
always  excites  antagonism  in  the  average  man, 
just  as  over-statement  arouses  suspicion. 

In  fact,  nothing  is  more  effective  than  an  under 
statement  so  clear  and  so  moderate  that  the  lis 
tener  is  inclined  to  believe  himself  capable  of 
restating  your  case  more  powerfully;  for  if  he 
once  undertakes  this,  he  is  your  partizan  forever, 
if  only  for  the  pleasure  of  arguing  on  your  side 
better  than  you  have  done.  As  M.  Emile  Faguet 
has  reminded  us  recently,  "  the  great  point  of  all 
dialectic  and  of  all  eloquence  is  to  make  men  be 
lieve  that  they  come  to  a  decision  of  their  own 
accord,  that  they  are  guiding  themselves,  that  the 
idea  which  has  just  been  given  to  them  is  one  they 
have  had  since  infancy."  This  is  a  difficult  feat, 
no  doubt,  but  it  can  be  accomplisht  by  a  sincere 
speaker  who  is  also  adroit,  as  Lincoln  was.  It 
is  never  achieved  by  an  exhorter  who  scolds  and 
who  bullies;  the  more  he  talks  himself  hoarse, 
the  more  he  hardens  the  hearts  of  his  hearers, 
fixt  in  their  resolve  to  oppose  him. 

It  is  recorded  that  Benjamin  R.  Curtis  once 
tried  a  law  case  against  John  P.  Hale,  and  was 
astounded  when  the  verdict  went  against  him. 
"I  had  with  me  all  the  evidence  and  all  the  argu 
ment,"  he  explained,  "but  that  confounded  fel 
low  Hale  got  so  intimate  with  the  jury  that  I 
269 


PERSUASION  AND  CONTROVERSY 

could  do  nothing  with  them."  And  we  may  rest 
assured  that  there  was  in  Hale's  manner,  while 
he  was  dealing  with  the  men  in  the  jury-box, 
nothing  superior  or  condescending,  nothing  ag 
gressive  or  domineering.  He  met  them  on  the 
level  of  a  common  humanity,  and  he  assumed 
that  they  possest  both  intelligence  and  a  desire  to 
do  right.  It  is  comic  to  think  how  complete  a 
failure  Carlyle  or  Ruskin  would  have  made  had 
either  of  them  been  called  to  the  bar.  Prophets 
of  wrath  they  may  have  been,  both  of  them,  but 
sweet  reasonableness  was  not  their  portion.  They 
may  have  helped  to  destroy  the  temples  of  Baal, 
but  whatever  they  sought  to  build  themselves 
was  built  on  the  shifting  sand.  At  best,  they 
achieved  only  the  easier  feat  of  destruction,  and 
they  failed  to  accomplish  the  more  useful  duty 
of  construction. 

An  illustration  of  the  successful  use  of  cogent 
under-statement  can  be  taken  from  the  history 
of  the  movement  in  behalf  of  international  copy 
right.  Only  after  half  a  dozen  years  of  incessant 
endeavor  was  it  possible  to  pass  the  act  of  1891, 
whereby  the  protection  of  copyright  in  the  United 
States  was  extended  to  foreign  authors  provided 
they  complied  with  certain  conditions.  Previously 
these  authors  had  no  control  here  over  their  own 
writings,  which  were  freely  pirated,  thus  forcing 
American  authors  to  sell  their  writings  in  unfair 
270 


PERSUASION  AND  CONTROVERSY 

competition  with  stolen  goods.  Obviously,  this 
was  a  bitter  wrong  alike  to  the  friendly  alien  and 
to  the  citizen;  but  it  was  very  difficult  to  make 
the  average  man  see  this.  Winter  after  winter 
the  members  of  the  American  Copyright  League 
devoted  themselves  to  the  awakening  of  public 
interest.  Meetings  were  held  in  the  larger  cities, 
and  reports  were  publisht  in  the  local  news 
papers  and  telegrapht  all  over  the  country; 
speeches  were  made  before  all  sorts  of  societies; 
sermons  were  preached  on  the  "national  sin  of 
literary  piracy";  articles  were  inserted  in  the 
magazines  and  reviews;  statements  were  put 
forth  frequently  in  which  the  question  was  con 
sidered  from  every  point  of  view;  explanatory 
pamphlets  were  to  be  had  for  the  asking;  and 
no  possible  means  of  arresting  public  attention  was 
neglected.  And  yet,  after  this  propaganda  had 
been  going  on  for  years,  the  advocates  of  justice 
were  continually  surprized  to  meet  men  of  educa 
tion  and  of  intelligence  who  had  paid  no  attention 
to  our  appeals  and  who  were  not  aware  that  there 
was  a  wrong  to  be  righted.  These  men  were  very 
rarely  hostile;  they  were  only  uninterested  be 
cause  of  their  total  ignorance  in  the  matter.  Gen 
erally  we  found  it  easy  enough  to  gain  their  sym 
pathy,  and  sometimes  even  their  active  support, 
after  they  once  understood  the  need  for  an  im 
provement  in  the  law.  But  they  had  been 
271 


PERSUASION  AND  CONTROVERSY 

minding  their  own  business,  and  they  had  not 
been  reacht  by  any  of  the  multitudinous  appeals 
that  we  had  been  making. 

Some  of  the  appeals,  it  must  be  confest,  were 
now  and  then  declamatory  and  domineering; 
and  it  was  apparently  a  reading  of  these  unduly 
vehement  documents  which  turned  the  late 
Speaker  Reed  against  the  cause.  This  was  the 
more  unfortunate  as  the  time  came  when  he  was 
the  one  man  whose  good-will  was  absolutely  neces 
sary.  The  friends  of  the  bill  believed  that  it 
would  pass  if  it  was  allowed  to  come  up;  that  is 
to  say,  if  only  the  Speaker  would  grant  a  small 
portion  of  time  in  the  final  days  of  the  session, 
always  tumultuously  overcrowded.  Just  then, 
as  it  happened,  a  member  of  the  League  publisht 
a  paper  from  a  new  point  of  view,  tracing  the 
slow  evolution  of  copyright  ever  since  the  inven 
tion  of  printing,  and  pointing  out  that  the  United 
States,  which  had  been  among  the  most  progres 
sive  nations  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
was  among  the  most  backward  in  this  respect  at 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth.  The  writer  of  this 
paper  was  studiously  moderate  in  tone,  and  he 
strove  to  force  the  reader  to  draw  his  own  con 
clusion — that  the  opportunity  was  then  offered 
for  this  country  to  recover  its  proper  rank  among 
the  nations.  A  member  of  the  Copyright  League 
— who  was  afterward  the  President  of  the  United 
272 


PERSUASION  AND  CONTROVERSY 

States— askt  the  Speaker  to  read  this  article  as 
a  personal  favor  to  him;  and  the  next  day  Mr. 
Reed  told  Mr.  Roosevelt  that  he  was  ready  to 
grant  time  for  the  passage  of  the  bill. 

Probably  it  was  the  cautious  under-statement 
of  this  paper  which  captured  the  sympathy  of 
the  Speaker,  and  quite  possibly  the  vehemence 
of  some  of  the  other  appeals  which  had  repelled 
him  were  more  effective  with  readers  of  another 
type.  The  very  manner  needful  to  arouse  the 
interest  of  one  man  another  man  may  reject  as 
rant.  There  are  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men, 
and  they  cannot  all  be  converted  by  the  same  ar 
guments.  But,  however  emotional  the  speaker, 
however  lofty  his  standard,  however  assured  he 
may  be  as  to  the  moral  necessity  of  the  step  he  is 
advocating,  he  will  fail  to  reach  the  hearts  and 
to  touch  the  minds  of  his  hearers  unless  he  is  ever 
honest  with  himself  and  unless  he  is  absolutely 
fair  to  his  opponents.  If  he  descends  to  person 
alities,  he  may  amuse  his  audience,  but  he  is  far 
less  likely  to  bring  them  over  to  his  side.  Indeed, 
the  sincere  advocate  of  a  cause  will  often  accom 
plish  most  by  resolutely  refusing  to  acknowledge 
the  existence  of  his  opponents  as  persons.  In 
stating  his  own  case  he  will  meet  their  arguments 
fairly,  refuting  them  as  best  he  can;  but  it  will 
be  arguments  that  he  will  attack,  and  never  the 
persons  who  have  put  forth  the  arguments. 
273 


PERSUASION  AND  CONTROVERSY 

Especially  will  he  refrain  from  misjudging  the 
good  faith  of  those  who  urge  these  opposing 
arguments;  for,  by  the  very  fact  that  he  has  been 
willing  to  enter  on  a  debate  with  them,  he  has 
placed  himself  on  the  same  plane,  and  whatso 
ever  debases  them  lowers  him  also.  Any  man 
seeking  to  persuade  will  do  well  to  refrain  from 
controversy.  It  was  Dr.  Holmes  who  drew  at 
tention  to  what  he  wittily  called  "the  hydrostatic 
paradox  of  controversy,"  pointing  out  that  "con 
troversy  equalizes  fools  and  wise  men,  and  the 
fools  know  it." 

The  wise  men  know  it  also;  and  they  keep 
out.  They  know  that  controversy,  in  the  nar 
row  meaning  of  the  word,  is  useless,  and  worse 
than  useless,  even  if  it  does  not  descend  into  the 
rude  exchange  of  offensive  personalities.  They 
know,  as  Sainte-Beuve  has  declared,  that  "after 
half  an  hour  of  any  dispute  no  one  of  the  con 
testants  is  any  longer  in  the  right,  and  no  one  of 
them  is  then  really  aware  of  what  he  is  saying." 
They  know  that  public  interest  very  soon  ebbs 
away  from  a  dispute  between  persons,  and  that 
public  opinion  is  likely  to  accept  what  each  side 
says  against  the  other  and  to  reject  what  each  side 
says  in  favor  of  itself.  They  know  that  a  pro 
longed  debate  is  likely  to  defeat  the  desires  of 
those  who  are  in  the  right  and  to  raise  a  dust  of 
side-issues  for  the  profit  of  those  who  are  in  the 
274 


PERSUASION  AND  CONTROVERSY 

wrong.  They  know  that  nothing  is  more  hope 
lessly  uninteresting  than  a  controversy  which  has 
died  down  to  its  ashes.  They  know  that  pro 
tracted  controversy  is  fatal  to  persuasion,  and 
that  persuasion  is  the  only  means  of  carrying  a 
cause  to  victory. 

Not  a  few  wise  men  have  carried  this  distaste  for 
dispute  so  far  that  they  have  resolutely  refused  to 
pay  any  attention  to  personal  attacks.  Buffon  was 
one  of  these;  and  he  explained  that  he  took  pride 
in  the  thought  that  persons  of  a  certain  kind  could 
not  injure  him.  Ibsen  advised  Georg  Brandes 
to  adopt  the  same  attitude — "Look  straight 
ahead;  never  reply  with  a  word  in  the  papers;  if 
in  your  writings  you  become  polemical,  then  do 
not  direct  your  polemic  against  this  or  that  par 
ticular  attack;  never  show  that  a  word  of  your 
enemies  has  had  any  effect  on  you."  Jowett 
summed  up  his  own  principles  in  a  terse  sentence : 
"Never  retract,  never  explain;  get  it  done,  and 
let  them  howl."  And  this  is  only  a  new  setting 
of  the  old  Scots  saying,  "They  say.  What  say 
they?  Let  them  say."  Silent  contempt  is 
often  the  most  crushing  rejoinder;  it  is  the  true 
vengeance  of  large  souls;  and  it  is  the  one  way 
open  to  all  who  are  seeking  to  persuade  and  who 
are  determined  to  abstain  from  bickering.  A 
good  workman  is  not  known  by  the  chips  on  his 
shoulder. 

275 


PERSUASION  AND  CONTROVERSY 

In  attacking  a  venerable  abuse,  the  ardent  ad 
vocate  of  improvement  will  find  himself  confronted 
by  opponents  belonging  to  several  different  classes. 
First  of  all,  there  are  those  who  are  conservative  by 
nature  and  who  are  moved  to  defend  the  establisht 
order  of  things  simply  because  it  is  the  establisht 
order,  and  because  they  dread  and  detest  inno 
vation  of  any  kind;  and  these  can  often  be  won 
over  by  showing  that  the  proposed  change  is  not 
really  an  innovation,  but  rather  a  return  to  the 
practise  of  the  fathers  and  to  the  usage  of  the  good 
old  days.  Second,  there  are  those  whose  good 
faith  is  beyond  question,  but  whose  temperament 
leads  them  to  defend  the  existing  situation  in 
spite  of  its  defects;  and  these  are  the  men  whose 
opposition  is  most  difficult  to  overcome,  because 
they  are  honorable  adversaries,  possest  of  the  best 
intentions.  They  must  ever  be  faced  firmly  but 
courteously;  and  their  arguments  must  be  met 
squarely.  It  was  of  opponents  of  this  type  that 
Gladstone  was  thinking  when  he  said  that  "the 
one  lesson  life  has  taught  me  is  that  where  there 
is  known  to  be  a  common  object,  the  pursuit  of 
truth,  there  should  be  a  studious  desire  to  interpret 
the  adversary  in  the  best  sense  his  words  will 
fairly  bear." 

There  is  a  third  class  containing  those  who 
are  personally  profiting  by  the  abuse  which  you 
are  attacking;  and  it  is  from  these  that  you  may 
276 


PERSUASION  AND  CONTROVERSY 

expect  the  bitterest  fight  and  the  most  unscrup 
ulous.  They  will  never  hesitate  to  resort  to  the 
meanest  of  personalities  and  to  the  imputing  of 
the  lowest  of  motives.  They  will  seize  any  weapon 
that  comes  handy;  and  they  will  never  hesitate 
to  strike  below  the  belt.  This  is  an  unsavory  op 
position,  which  must  be  anticipated;  as  the  'Au 
tocrat  of  the  Breakfast-Table'  declared,  with  his 
pithy  shrewdness,  "you  never  need  think  you 
can  turn  over  any  old  falsehood  without  a  terrible 
squirming  and  scattering  of  the  horrid  little  popu 
lation  that  dwells  under  it."  But  altho  the  de 
fense  of  an  abuse  by  the  men  of  this  type,  who  are 
toucht  in  their  pocket,  will  always  be  venomous 
and  protracted,  it  is  likely  also  to  be  so  violent 
and  so  hysteric  and  so  offensive  as  to  repel  the 
sympathy  of  the  disinterested  onlookers  in  whose 
hands  the  final  decision  lies. 

As  a  general  rule,  it  is  safest  and  wisest  to 
disregard  the  ululations  of  unworthy  adversaries 
of  this  type  or  of  any  other;  but  sometimes  a  rare 
occasion  may  arise  when  it  is  needful  to  turn  on  an 
opponent,  and  to  smite  him  hip  and  thigh,  and 
to  reduce  him  at  once  to  impotent  silence;  and 
this  is  what  Huxley  did  to  the  Bishop  of  Oxford. 
Sometimes  again  the  chance  may  present  itself 
to  puncture  an  adversary  with  a  swift  retort,  just 
as  Leatherstocking  caught  by  the  handle  the 
tomahawk  the  Indian  had  thrown  at  him,  hurling 
277 


PERSUASION   AND   CONTROVERSY 

it  back  at  once  to  bury  itself  in  the  brain  of  his 
red  foeman.  Once  when  a  noted  wit  was  hold 
ing  forth,  a  drunken  bystander  broke  out  with 
"You're  a  liar!"  To  which  the  noted  wit  re 
turned,  instantly  and  with  the  utmost  suavity  of 
manner,  "Surely  not— if  you  say  so!"  When 
Beecher  was  addressing  a  meeting  in  Liverpool 
packt  with  Southern  sympathizers,  a  voice  from 
the  gallery  askt  him  why  we  had  not  ended  the 
war  in  sixty  days  as  we  had  said  we  would.  At 
this  home-thrust,  there  was  a  pause  in  the  tumult, 
and  Beecher  took  advantage  of  it  to  reply,  "We 
should  have  done  so,  if  we  had  been  fighting 
Englishmen!"  To  the  credit  of  his  hearers,  this 
bold  stroke  toucht  their  sense  of  fair  play,  and 
thereafter  they  listened  to  what  he  had  to  say. 

But  tho  this  may  be  successful,  it  is  ever 
dangerous,  for  it  is  perilously  close  to  the  flinging 
to  and  fro  of  empty  personalities.  If  the  foeman 
is  unworthy  of  your  steel,  and  if  you  suspect  him 
capable  of  a  foul  blow,  it  is  best  to  refuse  to  cross 
swords  with  him.  There  was  common  sense  in  the 
saying  of  Truthful  James,  in  his  metrical  minutes 
of  the  meeting  of  the  '  Society  upon  the  Stanislaw,' 
when  he  declared  that 

I  hold  it  is  not  decent  for  a  scientific  gent 
To  say  another  is  an  ass— at  least,  to  all  intent; 
Nor  should  the  individual  who  happens  to  be  meant 
Reply  by  heaving  rocks  at  him,  to  any  great  extent. 

278 


PERSUASION   AND   CONTROVERSY 

The  general  public  takes  no  interest  in  the 
bandying  about  of  personalities;  and  it  is  even 
inclined  to  despise  a  victory  won  in  such  ignoble 
strife.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  swift  to  give  its 
confidence  to  those  whom  it  has  observed  to  be 
honest  to  themselves  and  fair  to  their  adversaries, 
moderate  in  statement  and  dignified  in  utterance. 
And  it  is  the  general  public  which  must  decide 
the  question  at  last;  and  the  general  public  is 
ever  repelled  by  unseemly  altercation.  It  can 
be  reacht  only  by  incessant  and  unassuming  per 
suasiveness.  He  who  seeks  to  convert  it  must  be 
patient  and  persistent,  coaxing  the  general  public 
to  go  forward  with  him  one  step  at  a  time,  and 
taking  care  that  there  are  no  steps  backward.  He 
must  remember  the  potency  of  little  drops  of 
water  and  of  little  grains  of  sand.  He  must  not 
try  for  too  much  all  at  once;  but  he  must  ever  be 
ready  to  take  what  he  can  get,  and  he  must  al 
ways  be  glad  to  convert  an  individual  here  and 
there,  since  the  general  public  is  only  a  mass  of 
stray  individuals. 

Above  all  else  must  the  advocate  of  a  new  cause 
and  the  assailant  of  an  old  abuse  respect  the 
opinions  of  those  he  is  striving  to  convert.  He 
must  always  bear  in  mind  that  the  average  man, 
the  unit  which  is  multiplied  into  the  general  public, 
means  to  do  right — that  the  average  man  is  ever 
ready  honestly  to  echo  the  fine  phrase  of  Marcus 
279 


PERSUASION   AND   CONTROVERSY 

Aurelius:  "If  any  one  is  able  to  convince  me 
and  show  that  I  do  not  think  or  act  right,  I  will 
gladly  change.  For  I  seek  the  truth,  by  which 
no  man  was  ever  injured.  But  he  is  injured  who 
abides  in  his  error  and  ignorance." 


280 


REFORM    AND    REFORMERS 


REFORM  AND  REFORMERS 

WHEN  a  notorious  Tammany  official  went 
on  the  stump  and  cried  "To  Hell  with 
Reform,"  many  simple  folk  were  shockt,  and 
many  less  simple  pretended  to  be  shockt.  But 
the  blatant  spoilsman  was  only  voicing  violently 
a  sentiment  which  must  often  have  been  felt, 
more  or  less  clearly,  by  many  an  honest  man 
who  happened  to  be  endowed  with  a  full  share 
of  the  invaluable  quality  for  which  we  have  no 
better  name  than  sense-of-humor.  It  was  this 
sentiment  which  moved  Curtis  (recalling  the 
Brook  Farmers)  to  assert  that  "no  wise  man  is 
long  a  Reformer,  for  wisdom  sees  plainly  that 
growth  is  steady,  sure,  and  neither  condemns  nor 
rejects  what  is  or  has  been,"  whereas  "Reform 
is  organized  distrust."  It  was  this  sentiment 
which  moved  Lowell  (having  Garrison  in  mind) 
to  declare  that  "there  never  has  been  a  leader 
of  Reform  who  was  not  also  a  blackguard." 

In  the  'Blithedale  Romance,'  Hawthorne, 
drawing  on  his  experiences  with  the  same  group 
of  enthusiasts  that  Curtis  had  associated  with, 
warns  us  that  "no  sagacious  man  will  long  retain 
his  sagacity  if  he  live  exclusively  among  Reform- 

283 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

ers  and  progressive  people,  without  periodically 
returning  into  the  settled  system  of  things,  to 
correct  himself  by  a  new  observation  from  that 
old  standpoint."  The  biographer  of  Parkman 
tells  us  how  that  clear-eyed  and  high-minded 
historian  was  ever  ready  to  "ride  hard  against 
idealists  and  Reformers,"  holding  that  transcen 
dentalism  was  weakening  to  common  sense  and 
dangerous  to  practical  aims.  "The  ideal  Re 
former,"  said  Parkman,  "is  generally  a  nuisance 
when  he  tries  to  deal  with  the  broad  and  many- 
sided  questions  involved  in  the  government  of 
nations."  Colonel  Higginson,  after  a  wide  ex 
perience  of  women  and  men,  has  assured  us  that 
"Reformers  are  like  Eskimo  dogs,  which  must 
be  hitcht  to  the  sledge  each  by  a  separate  thong; 
if  put  in  a  common  harness,  they  turn  and  eat 
each  other  up."  And  Emerson,  after  declaring 
that  he  liked  best  "  the  strong  and  worthy  persons 
who  support  the  social  order  without  hesitation 
or  misgiving,"  asserted  that  "the  profest  philan 
thropists,  it  is  strange  and  horrible  to  say,  are  an 
altogether  odious  set  of  people  whom  one  would 
shun  as  the  worst  of  bores  and  canters." 

Here  is  a  striking  unanimity  of  opinion,  and 
if  we  are  justified  in  suspecting  a  sinister  motive 
in  the  frank  desire  of  the  Tammany  office-seeker 
to  send  below  the  thing  he  had  reason  to  hate, 
we  can  impute  no  mean  motive  to  Lowell,  to 
284 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

Curtis  and  to  Higginson,  who  proved  themselves 
active  in  good  works.     And  if  Hawthorne  and 
Parkman  and  Emerson  were  never  actual  lead-1 
ers  in  any  specific  improvement  of  public  affairs, 
we  know  them  as  men  of  lofty  character  and  of 
transparent  sincerity.     Why  is  itlHat  tliese  men, 
the  very  stuff  ouTDf  which  heroic  chiefs  are  made, 
seem  to  be  united  in  disliking  and  in  distrusting  \ 
not  only  the  noble  army  of  Reformers  but  also  the    } 
sacred  cause  of  Reform  itself?    They,  at  least,  '' 
had  no  personal  reason  to  think  ill  of  it;  they  had 
no  occasion  to  fear  it;  they  were  ever  ready  to  do 
what  might  lie  in  their  power  to  help  along  the 
millennium;    and,  if  they  held  these  hostile  or 
contemptuous  opinions,  we  may  rest  assured  they 
had  good  and  sufficient  reasons. 

It  is  not,  of  course,  that  they  were  not  friends  of  \ 
progress  and  that  they  would  not  subscribe  to  ' 
Professor  William  James's  declaration  that  "for 
morality,  life  is  a  war,  and  the  service  of  the  high 
est  is  a  sort  of  cosmic  patriotism,  which  also  calls 
for  volunteers."  It  is  not  that  they  would  hesitate 
to  approve  of  Whittier's  advice  to  a  youth  of 
fifteen:  "My  lad,  if  thou  wouldst  win  success, 
join  thyself  to  some  unpopular  but  noble  cause." 
It  is  not  that  they  were  prepared  to  accept  as  their 
own  the  bitter  remark  attributed  to  the  late 
Roscoe  Conkling,  "When  Dr.  Johnson  said  that 
Patriotism  was  the  last  refuge  of  a  scoundrel,  he 
285 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

did  not  foresee  the  infinite  possibilities  of  the 
word  Reform."  But  altho  Lowell  and  Curtis  and 
Higginson  might  not  be  prepared  to  echo  the 
sharp  saying  of  that  cynical  politician,  none  of 
them  would  fail  to  understand  what  he  meant 
and  to  appreciate  the  reasons  which  moved  him 
to  say  it. 

In  any  attempt  to  explain  this  attitude  of  theirs 
the  first  suggestion  which  forces  itself  on  us  is, 
that  the  Reformer  is  very  likely  to  be  lacking  in 
the  sense-of-humor,  without  which  a  man  is 
more  or  less  incapacitated  from  getting  along 
comfortably  with  his  fellows.  By  the  very  fact 
that  he  has  set  his  heart  upon  the  accomplishment 
of  a  single  improvement,  he  has  reduced  his  sense 
of  proportion.  He  is  likely  to  resemble  the  char 
acter  in  Ibsen's  *  Wild  Duck/  who  is  described  as 
"suffering  from  chronic  integrity  in  an  acute 
form";  and  he  may  possibly  have  a  certain  like 
ness  to  the  character  in  Turgenef's  'Dimitri 
Roudine,'  who  took  himself  so  seriously  that  "he 
lookt  like  his  own  statue  erected  by  a  national 
subscription."  He  feels  himself  exalted  by  the 
elevation  of  his  own  aim  in  life;  and  it  is  hard  for 
him  not  to  become  convinced  that  he  is  right  and 
always  right,  whereas  the  rest  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  globe  are  wrong  and  always  wrong.  Slowly 
but  surely,  as  the  years  roll  by,  he  comes  to  the 
conclusion  that  he  alone  possesses  the  secret  of 
286 


REFORM  AND   REFORMERS 

wisdom,  and  that  he  alone  holds  the  universe  by 
the  tail. 

When  Charles  Sumner  was  elected  senator, 
Theodore  Parker  wrote  him,  "I  hope  you  will 
build  on  the  Rock  of  Ages,  and  look  to  Eternity 
for  your  justification."  Now,  when  a  man  is 
looking  to  Eternity  and  building  on  the  Rock  of 
Ages  he  may  very  easily  accept  himself  as  a 
prophet  and  believe  that  his  denunciation  of  evil 
is  the  result  of  direct  inspiration.  In  time,  as 
he  finds  his  burning  words  wasted  on  stubborn 
ears,  he  may  be  moved  to  the  increasing  viru 
lence  of  invective  which  is  prone  to  call  forth,  tho 
never  to  justify,  the  retaliatory  brutality  of  per 
sonal  assault.  Reform  is  tarnisht,  as  Religion  \ 
is  stained,  when  those  who  declare  themselves  1 
its  followers  discover  themselves  to  be  lacking  in  / 
the  ordinary  decencies  of  civilization.  There  is 
no  denying  that  there  are  to-day  among  the  so- 
called  anti-Imperialists  and  among  those  who 
are  now  urging  Total  Abstinence,  as  there  were 
half  a  century  ago  among  the  Anti-slavery  lead 
ers,  not  a  few,  in  good  standing  among  their  con 
scientious  associates,  who  have  proved  themselves 
reckless  in  misrepresentation  and  malignant  in 
imputing  evil  motives  to  their  opponents.  Ap 
parently,  some  of  those  who  plant  themselves  on 
a  lofty  pinnacle  far  above  the  common  herd  of 
mankind,  to  proclaim  a  higher  rule  of  life  than 

287 


REFORM  AND  REFORMERS 

that  which  the  rest  of  the  world  seems  willing 
to  accept,  feel  themselves  thereby  freed  from  the 
obligations  prescribed  for  us  all  by  every-day 
courtesy,  and  sometimes  even  from  those  im 
posed  by  common  honesty. 

Something  of  the  same  unscrupulousness,  due 
to  intensity  of  conviction,  has  been  discovered 
also  in  certain  religious  enthusiasts;  and  George 
Eliot, — so  Mr.  G.  J.  Holyoake  has  recently  re 
corded, — held  it  as  a  solemn  conviction,  the  result 
of  a  lifetime  of  observation,  that,  in  proportion 
as  the  thoughts  of  men  and  women  are  removed 
from  the  earth  in  which  they  live  to  an  invisible 
world,  they  are  led  to  neglect  their  duty  to  each 
other.  Whether  this  opinion  of  the  emancipated 
novelist  is  well  founded  or  not,  there  is  justification 
for  the  belief  that  those  who  focus  their  thoughts 
on  a  single  object,  in  which  the  rest  of  us  take  a 
less  lively  interest,  and  which  is  to  be  achieved 
only  by  protracted  agitation,  are  very  likely  to  be 
led  after  a  while  to  see  this  single  object  out  of 
all  proportion,  overshadowing  everything  else  in 
the  world.  In  time,  opposition  enrages  them; 
and  they  begin  to  feel  that  it  can  be  due  only  to 
the  malign  influence  of  a  personal  devil.  They 
are  firmly  assured  that  he  who  is  not  with  them 
is  against  them;  and  they  are  no  longer  in  doubt 
that  he  who  is  against  them  is  an  enemy  of  man 
kind.  Thus  it  was  that  Garrison,  never  a  lovely 
288 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

character,  was  moved  to  declare  that  if  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  United  States  protected  slavery, 
it  was  "a  league  with  Death  and  a  covenant  with 
Hell."  In  violence,  as  in  vocabulary,  this  is 
really  not  so  very  unlike  the  Tammany  outcry, 
"To  Hell  with  Reform." 

Even  when  the  sincere  Reformer  of  this  type, 
the  disinterested  and  public-spirited  citizen,  is 
able  to  refrain  from  vulgar  outbreaks  of  temper, 
he  may  yet  yield  to  the  temptation  of  despising 
the  heads  and  the  hearts  of  all  those  who  fail  to  be 
moved  by  his  appeals  and  who  refuse  to  look  at 
the  world  from  his  special  standpoint.  It  is 
difficult  indeed  for  him  not  to  feel  self-satisfac 
tion  in  his  own  superior  sagacity  and  in  his  own 
more  sensitive  integrity;  and  this  self-satisfaction 
is  perilously  close  to  conceit.  By  the  very  fact 
that  he  sees  a  need  for  action  which  others  fail  to 
see,  he  can  hardly  help  thinking  himself  more 
far-sighted  than  the  average.  By  the  very  act 
of  taking  trouble  for  the  general  good,  when  his 
fellows  stand  by  inert,  he  is  forced  to  find  himself 
more  public-spirited  than  other  citizens.  He  is 
sorely  tempted  to  regard  his  own  cotery  of  come- 
outers  as  the  sole  reservoirs  of  virtue  and  of  wis 
dom. 

This  leads  him  to  resent  bitterly  all  adverse 
criticism  of  his  acts;  and  it  brings  him  sometimes 
to  the  verge  of  unscrupulousness.     Conscious  of 
289 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

his  own  rectitude,  convinced  of  his  own  disinter 
estedness,  assured  of  his  own  sagacity,  devoted 
to  the  duty  of  hastening  the  delayed  triumph  of 
.his  cause,  he  is  sometimes  brought  to  accept  the 
indefensible  theory  that  the  end  justifies  the  means. 
He  is  sometimes  only  too  willing  to  "  fight  the 
devil  with  fire."  Now,  a  good  man  who  was 
also  a  wise  man  would  know  that  no  maxim  is 
falser  than  that  which  suggests  this  method  of 
battling  with  Satan.  Fire  is  the  devil's  own  ele 
ment,  and  he  has  has  never  any  fear  of  the  flames. 
What  he  flees  from  is  holy  water;  and  the  Re 
former  who  allows  the  adversary  the  choice  of 
weapons  is  a  dead  man  before  the  ground  is  paced 
for  the  duel. 

The  Reformer  of  this  type,  sincere  as  he  may 
be,  devoted  and  disinterested,  often  narrows  his 
outlook  till  he  loses  all  sense  of  proportion;  and, 
when  violence  of  speech  is  followed  by  unscrupu- 
lousness  of  action,  the  last  state  of  that  man  is 
worse  than  the  first.  As  he  develops  these  un- 
amiable  qualities  he  is  increasingly  unlikely  to 
endear  himself  to  his  fellow-men;  and  he  is  there 
by  thrown  back  on  his  associates,  many  of  them 
already  infected  with  similar  failings.  Or  he 
is  forced  to  fellowship  with  himself  alone;  and 
thus  he  is  in  danger  of  developing  the  deadly  dis 
ease  whichhas  aptly  been  termed  "moral  egotism." 
As  a  shrewd  observer  has  pointed  out,  "no  ego- 
290 


REFORM  AND   REFORMERS 

tism  is  so  vulnerable  as  moral  egotism;  and  in  no 
field  of  action — not  even  in  religion — is  its  in 
fluence  more  hurtful  than  in  politics."  Against 
this  moral  egotism  few  Reformers  are  immune, 
only  those  of  complete  sanity  of  body  and  mind, 
only  those  indeed  whom  nature  has  happily  pro 
tected  by  a  double  proportion  of  that  universal 
aseptic  for  which  we  have  only  an  inadequate 
name — the  sense-of-humor. 

After  all,  "the  best  of  men  are  but  men  at  their 
best,"  as  the  Puritan  soldier  said  long  ago;*  and 
Reformers  of  this  type,  ardent  and  sincere,  al- 
tho  often  violent  and  sometimes  unscrupulous, 
need  to  be  separated  sharply  from  Reformers  of 
another  type,  who  almost  justify  Emerson's 
dismissal  of  them  as  "canters."  Not  quite  do 
they  justify  it;  for,  altho  their  purpose  is  less 
single  and  altho  their  public  spirit  is  contaminated 
by  self-seeking,  they  are  not  altogether  humbugs, 
and  they  do  really  believe  in  what  they  preach. 
They  are  honestly  interested  in  the  Reform  they 
are  advocating,  even  tho  they  are  far  more  in 
terested  in  themselves.  They  urge  it  partly  for 
its  own  sake,  no  doubt,  but  partly  also  that  they 
may  claim  credit  to  themselves  for  its  accomplish 
ment.  They  do  not  so  much  identify  themselves 
with  the  movement  as  they  identify  the  move 
ment  with  themselves.  They  wish  to  see  the 
cause  conquer,  but  they  are  even  more  eager  to 
291 


REFORM  AND  REFORMERS 

push  themselves  into  the  best  places  in  the  tri 
umphal  procession, — not  too  far  behind  the  big 
drum.  They  are  ever  voluble  in  interviews  and 
ever  vociferous  on  the  platform.  They  live  in 
the  spot-light  of  publicity,  and  they  are  ever  seek 
ing  the  bubble  reputation  in  the  camera's  mouth. 

Far  more  than  the  over-strenuous  enthusiasts 
of  the  first  type  do  these  self-advertising  notoriety- 
mongers  of  this  second  type  bring  discredit  on  the 
movements  with  which  they  see  their  advantage 
in  associating  themselves.  Even  if  they  are  not 
wholly  hypocrites,  they  stand  forth  offensive  in 
the  sight  of  man.  They  justify  Emerson's  liking 
for  "the  strong  and  worthy  persons  who  support 
the  social  order  without  hesitation  or  misgiving." 
They  justify  the  hearty  contempt  which  the  better 
class  of  practical  politicians,  who  are  unpre 
tentiously  engaged  in  real  work,  so  often  ex 
press  toward  Reformers  in  general,  and  which 
Conkling  crystallized  in  the  cynical  saying  already 
quoted.  They  are  the  originals  of  the  sham  Re 
former  whom  Ibsen  set  on  the  stage  in  Stensgaard 
and  whom  Sardou  satirized  as  Rabagas — altho 
they  often  have  commingled  with  their  self-seeking 
somewhat  more  honesty  of  purpose  than  we  find 
in  the  contemptible  creatures  etched  by  the  Nor 
wegian  dramatist  and  by  the  Parisian  playwright. 

They  are  not  plain  hypocrites,  like  Tartuffe, 
for  not  only  do  they  lack  the  depth  of  that  ap- 
292 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

palling  personality,  but  they  are  sincere,  even  if 
they  are  shallow.  With  them  Reform  is  no  mere 
cloak,  snatcht  up  hurriedly  in  the  hour  of  need; 
it  is  the  garment  they  have  chosen  to  clothe  them 
selves  in,  that  they  may  take  part  in  the  parade. 
They  are  really  soldiers  in  the  cause  whose  uni 
form  they  wear;  and  they  are  volunteers  also, 
but  they  have  an  eye  to  the  bounty  and  to  the 
pension.  That  they  are  marching  forward  with 
the  flag  never  prevents  them  from  seeking  their 
own  profit,  often  in  devious  ways.  Some  of  the 
most  contemptible  intriguing  it  was  ever  my  mis 
fortune  to  behold  was  the  work  of  one  who  was 
forever  "holding  high  the  banner  of  the  Ideal"; 
and  quite  the  most  contemptible  act  of  selfish 
cowardice  within  my  knowledge  was  committed 
by  one  who  stood  before  the  public  as  the  very 
embodiment  of  Reform,  and  who  as  a  Reformer 
was  perfectly  sincere,  although  undeniably  self- 
seeking.  When  we  come  to  contrast  the  two 
types  of  Reformer  that  have  been  considered,  we 
find  that  it  is  difficult  to  draw  a  precise  line  mark 
ing  off  the  one  from  the  other.  At  the  head  of 
one  type  there  is  stalwart  disinterestedness,  and 
at  the  foot  of  the  other  there  is  shallow  self-seek 
ing,  but  in  the  middle  they  shade  into  each  other 
by  imperceptible  degrees,  since  there  is  often 
more  than  a  suspicion  of  self-esteem  in  the  one 
and  more  than  a  leaven  of  sincerity  in  the  other. 

293 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

A  third  type  there  is,  which  it  is  not  easy  to  set 
off  sharply  from  the  second.  In  this  class  we 
find  the  men  whose  fervor  in  behalf  of  a  noble 
cause  seems  to  have  its  source,  more  or  less,  in 
their  desire  to  get  into  better  company  than  their 
reputation  would  warrant.  They  seek  to  put 
forward  their  civic  virtues  as  a  plea  in  extenuation 
for  their  private  looseness  or  their  business  laxity. 
They  are  the  bad  men  who  advocate  one  good 
thing,  possibly  because  no  man  is  absolutely  bad, 
but  more  probably  because  they  see  in  this 
advocacy  a  chance  to  associate  themselves  with 
good  men,  who  would  not  otherwise  be  willing  to 
fellowship  with  them.  Reform  makes  strange 
bedfellows,  and  even  men  of  the  purest  char 
acter  are  rarely  over-particular  in  refusing  the  aid 
of  voluntary  allies  whose  own  record  is  far  from 
spotless.  Perhaps  it  would  be  unfair  to  call 
them  wolves  in  sheep's  clothing,  because  the 
wolf  rarely  appears  in  that  costume  until  after 
he  has  sated  his  hunger  for  lamb;  but  it  is  not 
unfair  to  describe  them  as  black  sheep  who  are 
seeking  to  smuggle  themselves  back  into  the  flock 
of  honest  folk.  Perhaps,  again,  it  would  not  be 
just  to  dismiss  them  frankly  as  self-seeking  hypo 
crites;  but  there  is  no  injustice  in  suggesting 
that  they  are 

Ready  to  make  up  for  sins  they  are  inclined  to 
By  damning  those  they  have  no  mind  to. 
294 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

Sometimes  they  persist  in  their  own  evil  practices, 
while  denouncing  virtuously  the  ill  deeds  of  others. 
For  instance,  one  of  the  newspapers  of  New  York, 
which  was  energetic  in  proclaiming  the  necessity 
of  abolishing  the  spoils  system  and  of  introducing 
the  Australian  ballot,  was  at  that  time  the  prop 
erty  of  a  notorious  railroad -wrecker,  who  was 
using  its  financial  columns  to  support  his  own 
stock-jobbing.  But  more  often  than  not  they 
pretend  to  have  abjured  sack  and  to  desire  to  live 
cleanly.  They  resemble  certain  heroines  of  the 
modern  drama,  in  that  they  have  "a  past"  which 
they  want  to  have  overlookt  or  condoned  in  the 
present.  Thus,  some  years  ago,  there  appeared 
as  the  chief  advocate  of  a  so-called  legal  reform 
a  lawyer  of  commanding  ability  whose  own  inde 
fensible  practices  as  the  counsel  of  Fisk  and  Gould 
had  brought  him  perilously  near  to  being  dis 
barred. 

Another  example  is  even  more  significant.  In 
one  of  the  largest  cities  in  the  Union  a  few  years 
ago,  in  a  truce  of  the  interminable  campaign 
against  municipal  misrule,  suddenly  half  a  dozen 
young  men  projected  themselves  into  view  as  the 
conspicuous  champions  of  civic  virtue  in  its 
austerest  attitude.  They  stood  up  to  be  counted 
in  favor  of  a  procedure  which  did  not  commend 
itself  to  older  and  wiser  leaders.  They  came  out 
broadly  in  the  full  glare  of  newspaper  notoriety. 

295 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

But  who  were  these  obscure  Reformers  who 
offered  themselves  up  like  imitators  of  Arnold 
of  Winkelried?  However  futile  their  act,  at 
least  their  intention  was  worthy ;  and  most  people 
dismissed  them  from  mind  as  merely  misguided 
enthusiasts.  But  a  gentleman  with  a  wide  ac 
quaintance  and  a  long  memory  happened  to  drop 
the  remark  in  a  club  that  it  was  not  a  little  curious 
that  two  of  these  indiscreet  Reformers  had  been 
partners  in  business  with  different  friends  of  his, 
and  that  his  friends  had  each  of  them  been  forced 
to  dissolve  the  partnership  from  disapproval  of  the 
practices  of  the  young  men  who  were  now  pran 
cing  into  the  lists  as  knights  of  civic  purity.  He 
had  mentioned  no  names;  but  another  member 
of  the  club  promptly  spoke  up  and  asked  if  Mr. 
So-and-so  was  meant,  mentioning  one  of  the 
half  dozen.  The  answer  was  that  Mr.  So-and-so 
had  not  been  in  the  mind  of  the  first  speaker. 
Whereupon  the  second  said  that  Mr.  So-and-so 
could  be  added  to  the  other  two;  "He  was  my 
partner  a  few  years  ago,  and  I  broke  up  the  firm 
because  I  did  not  like  the  way  he  did  business." 
The  examples  of  this  type  of  Reformer  are  far 
less  numerous  than  the  examples  of  the  two  other 
types;  but  a  Reform  movement  is  singularly 
fortunate  that  has  not  among  its  adherents  more 
than  one  man  of  this  unworthy  character,  often 
thrusting  himself  into  undue  prominence.  There 
296 


REFORM  AND   REFORMERS 

is  yet  a  fourth  group,  which  is  likely  to  be  the 
largest  of  all,  and  also  the  least  useful  and  the 
least  estimable.  This  consists  of  the  men  and 
women  who  are  forever  longing  for  novelty  for 
its  own  sake,  and  who  wish  to  see  the  establisht 
order  change,  merely  because  it  is  the  establisht 
order,  and  merely  because  they  themselves  are 
too  flighty  to  feel  the  need  of  keeping  the  ancient 
landmarks.  They  are  not  devoted  to  any  one 
Reform  in  particular,  but  to  all  Reforms  in  gen 
eral.  They  are  wholly  without  the  discrimination 
which  warns  us  that,  when  a  man  is  marching  to 
a  tune  inaudible  to  others,  he  may  be  keeping 
step  to  the  music  of  the  spheres  or  he  may  be 
following  the  footsteps  of  the  Rat- Wife. 

They  are  the  faddists,  the  freaks,  the  cranks, 
who  take  up  with  every  passing  whim  of  the  mo 
ment  and  who  tag  themselves  to  the  tail  of  every 
cause,  whether  it  is  wise  or  otherwise,  incapable 
of  espousing  a  true  Reform  for  its  merits,  and 
ready  to  embrace  a  sham  simply  because  it  has 
been  accepted  by  others  as  scatter-brained  as 
they  are  themselves.  To-day  they  may  be  vege 
tarians,  who  clothe  themselves  only  in  animal 
fiber;  yesterday  they  revered  the  revelations  of  the 
spirit-rappers ;  to-morrow  they  will  rely  on  absent 
treatment  for  the  relief  of  chronic  disease.  They 
vaunt  themselves  as  Theosophists  for  a  season, 
only  to  appear  the  next  year  as  Christian  Scientists. 
297 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

We  find  them  plentifully  in  the  Salem  witchcraft- 
trials,  in  the  more  violent  religious  revivals,  and 
again  in  the  Transcendental  movement.  In  the 
pages  of  Lowell's  pungent  paper  on  Thoreau, 
we  have  the  brilliant  record  of  his  recollection 
of  this  riffraff  of  Reform  as  he  had  occasion  to 
observe  it  in  his  youth.  They  cling  to  the  skirts 
of  every  cause,  impeding  its  advance  and  making 
it  more  or  less  ridiculous.  Sometimes  they  are 
numerous  enough  to  capture  the  control  of  the 
organization,  which  is  sure  to  founder  then,  even  if 
it  had  been  in  sight  of  port.  Sometimes  they  are 
weak-willed  creatures  who  scarcely  know  what  it 
is  that  they  really  want;  and  sometimes  they  are 
hysteric  extremists  who,  in  the  apt  phrase  of  the 
late  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  will  not  be  satis 
fied  until  the  President  of  the  United  States  is  a 
black  woman. 

When  John  Morrissey,  prize-fighter  and  ward 
politician,  once  walkt  from  his  gambling-house 
at  Saratoga  to  the  town-hall  to  size  up  a  Reform 
convention  then  in  session  there,  he  came  out 
promptly,  declaring  that  he  was  not  afraid  of 
anything  those  fellows  could  do,  since  they  were 
"only  a  lot  of  long-haired  men  and  of  short-haired 
women."  What  the  ward  politician  treated  with 
contempt,  the  practical  man  has  no  respect  for. 
These  feeble  folk,  light-witted  and  loud-voiced, 
are  forever  warning  away  the  hard-headed  and 
298 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

strong-armed  men  of  affairs,  without  whose  sym 
pathy  no  cause  is  likely  to  make  much  progress, 
and  without  whose  active  aid  nothing  lasting  is 
likely  to  be  accomplisht.  It  is  only  when  these 
men  of  affairs  conquer  their  disgust  for  the  crea 
tures  of  this  type,  and  ally  themselves  with  the 
devoted  enthusiasts  of  the  first  group,  that  any 
Reform  begins  really  to  have  a  chance  of  success. 
The  enthusiasts  supply  the  moral  fervor,  and  the 
men  of  affairs  supply  the  solid  common  sense, 
without  an  abundance  of  which  nothing  ever  gets 
itself  done  in  this  world. 

These  men  of  affairs,  not  original  enthusiasts, 
and  only  tardily  converted  by  reasons  which  ap 
peal  to  their  intelligence,  make  up  a  fifth  class 
of  Reformer,  the  men  interested  in  a  specific 
cause  and  carrying  it  steadily  to  its  final  accom 
plishment  without  haste  and  without  rest.  They, 
and  they  alone,  assure  the  victory.  The  original 
enthusiasts  must  convert  them  or  nothing  will 
happen;  for  until  they  are  converted  the  case  is 
hopelesss.  When  they  begin  to  join  in  sufficient 
numbers,  the  end  is  near;  the  cause  is  won,  and 
the  final  triumph  is  then  only  a  question  of  time. 
They  are  not  the  profest  philanthropists  whom 
Emerson  shrank  from;  they  are  "the  strong  and 
worthy  men  who  support  the  social  order,"  but 
who  have  been  made  to  see  the  danger  of  some 
special  leak  in  the  ship  of  state  and  who  are  will- 
299 


REFORM  AND   REFORMERS 

ing  to  man  the  pumps  and  to  lend  a  hand  to  the 
calking,  returning  promptly  to  their  own  work 
whenever  this  single  task  is  finisht  to  their  satis 
faction.  When  they  hold  that  the  time  has  come, 
they  do  not  hesitate;  they  enlist  "for  three  years 
or  the  war."  They  take  up  the  good  work, 
heartily,  fixing  their  eye  on  that,  and  overcoming 
their  distaste  for  the  company  they  have  to  keep. 
They  are  resolved  to  get  the  job  done,  even  if  they 
have  to  labor  by  the  side  of  the  freak  and  of  the 
fraud,  of  the  wild -eyed  crank  and  of  the  semi- 
repentant  crook. 

Mr.  Morley  tells  us  that  Gladstone  had  "none 
of  that  detachment  often  found  among  superior 
minds,  which  we  honor  for  its  disinterestedness, 
even  while  we  lament  its  impotence  in  result." 
In  other  words,  Gladstone  was  a  practical  poli 
tician.  He  was  constructive,  and  not  merely 
critical.  He  was  not  a  moral  egotist,  but  a  pub 
lic  servant,  who  helped  to  get  things  done.  No 
doubt,  the  Abolitionists,  in  spite  of  their  constant 
wrangling  with  one  another,  and  in  spite  of  their 
occasional  lack  of  patriotism,  did  arouse  the 
attention  of  the  country  and  did  help  to  center  it 
on  an  evil  that  needed  to  be  rooted  up;  but  the 
slaves  were  freed  by  Lincoln,  the  very  practical 
politician,  who  had  at  least  one  characteristic  in 
common  with  Gladstone,  in  that  he  never  mis 
took  for  "courage  or  independence  the  unhappy 
300 


REFORM  AND   REFORMERS 

preference  for  having  a  party  or  an  opinion  ex 
clusively  for  one's  self."  Lincoln  was  patient 
and  long-suffering;  he  bided  his  time;  he  was 
at  once  persuasive  and  fearless,  but  he  was  never 
needlessly  aggressive.  He  was  wholly  free  from 
the  unpleasant  and  unprofitable  characteristic 
which  Lowell  declares  to  be  a  possession  of  too 
many  Reformers — "that  vindictive  love  of  virtue 
which  spreads  the  stool  of  repentance  with  thistle- 
burrs,  before  they  invite  the  erring  to  seat  them 
selves  thereon." 

It  is  not  the  amateur  enthusiast  who  achieves 
lasting  results,  it  is  the  professional  politician  of 
the  higher  type,  a  class  far  more  numerous  in  this 
country  than  most  of  us  are  prepared  to  admit. 
He  takes  care  of  his  fences,  of  course,  but  he 
serves  the  public  faithfully  to  the  best  of  his  ability. 
He  knows  how  to  get  things  done,  as  he  does 
not  dwell  alone  in  the  clouds,  but  keeps  his  footing 
solidly  on  the  soil.  His  idealism  is  practical,  no 
doubt,  but  it  is  real  enough.  He  is  always  an 
opportunist,  taking  the  most  he  can  get  at  the 
moment,  however  little  it  may  be,  and  however 
insufficient  he  may  deem  it.  He  is  not  easily  dis 
couraged,  for  he  knows  only  too  well  that  "poli 
tics  is  one  long  second  best";  and  he  is  firmly 
resolved  to  get  a  little  more  the  next  time  of  ask 
ing,  until  which  time  he  possesses  his  soul  in 
patience,  not  having  his  heart  set  on  any  single 
301 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

cause.  He  finds  solid  comfort  in  his  firm  belief 
that  in  the  long  run  all  Reforms  are  inevitable; 
they  are  certain  to  be  establisht  sooner  or  later; 
and  if  they  never  come  to  pass,  the  reason  must 
be  sought  in  the  fact  that  they  are  not  really 
Reforms,  however  plausible  they  may  have  ap 
peared  for  a  while. 

This,  indeed,  is  what  most  sharply  sets  off  the 
practical  politician  of  the  better  class  from  the 
narrower  and  more  eager  Reformers.  He  is  a 
professional;  and  they  are  amateurs.  He  is  free 
from  the  irascible  impatience  that  makes  them 
feverish.  He  is  interested  in  many  movements; 
and  they  have  centered  their  energy  on  only  one. 
He  is  likely  to  have  far  more  confidence  in  the 
education  of  public  opinion  than  in  any  swift 
overturning  due  to  hasty  legislation.  Bitter  ex 
perience  has  taught  him  that  mere  lawmaking  is 
often  worse  than  useless,  since  a  law  is  never  en 
forced  properly  when  it  has  not  public  opinion 
behind  it,  and  since  the  law  itself  is  easily  ob 
tained  and  easily  enforced  when  it  is  only  the  crys 
tallization  of  the  wish  of  the  people.  The  ama 
teurs  put  far  too  much  faith  in  special  measures 
and  in  legislative  devices  of  one  kind  or  another. 
The  professional  has  a  deep  contempt  for  these 
patent-medicines  of  lawmaking;  and  he  does  not 
expect  human  nature  to  be  changed  in  the  twin 
kling  of  an  eye  just  because  a  bill  has  been  past 
302 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

by  the  legislature.  He  does  not  believe  that  bad 
men  will  renounce  their  evil  ways  overnight,  or 
that  the  millennium  will  certainly  arrive  the 
morning  after  election. 

But  the  amateurs,  the  ardent  advocates  of  a 
single  cause,  lack  this  self-restraint  just  as  they 
lack  the  sense  of  proportion.  The  more  hectic 
and  hysteric  their  impatience,  the  more  bitter 
their  disappointment  at  the  delay  of  the  one  Re 
form  they  have  espoused.  And  their  language 
is  often  as  bitter  as  their  disappointment;  for 
enthusiasm  is  like  milk,  in  that  even  boiling  will  not 
always  prevent  it  from  turning  sour.  They  are 
likely  to  suffer  from  acute  attacks  of  moral  dys 
pepsia,  in  which  they  feel  that  all  is  for  the  worst 
in  the  worst  of  all  possible  worlds.  They  think 
scorn  of  the  rest  of  us  whom  they  have  failed  to 
convert;  and  they  pour  out  the  vials  of  their 
wrath  on  us.  Their  exacerbated  invective  is 
often  sad  evidence  of  the  wisdom  of  Mr.  Morley's 
assertion  that  "love  of  truth  is,  more  often  than 
we  think,  only  a  fine  name  for  temper."  They 
are  prompt  to  predict  the  direst  of  calamities, 
since  mankind  has  refused  so  far  to  adopt  their 
sole  specific  for  all  evils;  and  not  infrequently 
they  seem  to  regret  that  their  prophecies  of  evil 
are  not  swiftly  enough  fulfilled. 

These  unlovely  characteristics  account  for  the 
repulsion  which  many  a  worthy  citizen  feels  for 

3°3 


REFORM   AND   REFORMERS 

the  profest  Reformers.  He  dislikes  their  over- 
vehemence;  and  he  detests  what  seems  to  him 
their  unpatriotic  readiness  to  vilify  their  own 
country.  He  is  swift  to  smile  when  he  reads  the 
contemptuous  words  of  Emerson  and  Lowell  and 
Curtis.  But  he  is  derelict  to  his  duty  as  a  good 
citizen  if  he  is  content  to  dismiss  the  Reformers 
from  his  mind  and  to  go  on  his  way  self-satisfied, 
leaving  things  as  they  are  and  letting  the  affairs 
of  the  commonwealth  take  care  of  themselves. 
Eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  progress  also,  and 
he  is  not  a  good  citizen  if  he  is  willing  to  relinquish 
full  control  to  the  professional  politicians,  who 
are  not  all  faithful  servants  of  the  Republic  and 
who  have  in  their  ranks  a  large  proportion  of  the 
baser  sort,  selfish  spoilsmen,  seeking  power  for 
their  own  pocket  all  the  time. 

The  mob  of  Reformers  may  be  made  up  of 
men  of  every  degree  of  sincerity  and  disinterest 
edness,  and  it  may  include  all  the  varieties  differ 
entiated  in  the  preceding  paragraphs.  Some  of 
its  members  may  be  narrow  and  impetuous;  some 
may  be  perfervid  and  foolish;  some  may  be  self- 
seeking  and  unscrupulous;  and  only  a  few  may 
be  unselfish  and  wise  and  efficient.  We  may  smile 
at  their  exaggerations  and  at  their  diatribes;  we 
may  laugh  at  their  conceit  and  their  absurdities; 
we  may  be  irritated  by  their  perversities;  but  it  is 
only  at  our  peril  that  we  stop  our  ears  absolutely 
3°4 


REFORM  AND  REFORMERS 

to  their  appeals  and  their  warnings.  Reformers, 
lofty  or  lowly,  perform  a  needed  function;  and 
in  the  machinery  of  society  even  the  eccentric  and 
crank  may  be  useful. 

We  ought  not  to  let  our  own  sense-of-humor 
overcome  our  sense  of  duty.  We  may  scoff  at 
Reformers  if  we  like,  but  we  ought  to  work  with 
them,  when  we  must,  profiting  by  their  zeal  and 
utilizing  their  energy.  Even  if  there  is  warrant 
for  suspicion  sometimes,  there  is  ever  a  core  of 
true  disinterestedness  at  the  center;  and,  after 
all,  even  the  long-haired  men  and  the  short- 
haired  women  may  be  agents  in  the  uplift  which 
gives  a  higher  hope  for  humanity  in  the  future. 
To  refuse,  once  for  all,  to  join  hands  with  Re 
formers,  because  of  distaste  for  some  of  their 
deeds  and  of  disgust  at  some  of  their  work,  is  to 
stand  by  while  the  clock  of  progress  is  stopt.  It 
is  to  help  to  stiffen  the  body  politic  into  a  Chinese 
lethargy.  It  is  to  renounce  the  keen  pleasure 
of  struggling  sturdily  for  the  establishment  of 
justice.  It  is  to  lag  lazily  behind,  when  nobler 
men  are  striving  to  prove  the  everlasting  truth  of 
a  fine  saying  of  Pascal's,  which  has  been  rendered 
into  rhythmic  English:  "Ebbing  and  flowing, 
yet  ever  progressing,  the  tides  of  life  creep  up  the 
sands  of  Time." 

(1905-) 


305 


"THOSE  LITERARY  FELLOWS 


"THOSE  LITERARY  FELLOWS" 

IN  one  of  the  later  decades  of  the  nineteenth 
century  a  politician  who  felt  himself  to  be 
pre-eminently  practical,  sought  to  dismiss  all 
further  consideration  of  a  certain  proposed  meas 
ure  by  the  discourteous  assertion  that  it  was  ad 
vocated  only  by  a  lot  of  "those  damned  literary 
fellows."  This  practical  politician  probably 
prided  himself  on  being  one  of  the  plain  people; 
and  no  doubt  he  believed  that  he  was  appealing 
to  a  widespread  prejudice.  Certainly  he  would 
have  been  as  deeply  pained  as  he  would  have 
been  astonisht  could  he  have  foreseen  the  second 
administration  of  the  twentieth  century,  when 
the  President  of  the  United  States,  the  Secretary 
of  State,  the  Ambassador  of  the  French  Republic 
and  later  the  Ambassador  of  the  British  Empire, 
should  be,  all  of  them,  literary  fellows.  Had  he 
survived  to  behold  this  strange  coincidence,  it 
would  not  have  been  easy  for  him  to  account  for 
the  high  esteem  in  which  Mr.  Roosevelt  and 
Mr.  Hay,  M.  Jusserand  and  Mr.  Bryce  were  held 
by  the  practical  politicians  and  by  the  plain 
people  also. 

Yet  there  mav  be  profit  for  men  of  letters  as  a 

309 


class,  if  we  take  time  to  ask  ourselves  what  under 
lay  the  distrust  of  this  practical  politician  and  to 
inquire  what  warrant  he  had  for  it  and  what  sup 
port  he  might  hope  to  find  in  the  opinion  of  the 
average  man  upon  whose  sympathy  the  pro 
fessional  office-seeker  must  ever  rely.  And  we 
may  begin  by  admitting  that  this  plain-spoken 
spoilsman  was  only  voicing  an  opinion  long 
standing  and  widespread.  However  inexplicable 
it  may  seem  to  us,  it  is  a  fact,  that  both  the  plain 
people  and  the  practical  politicians  have  often 
displayed  an  undeniable  suspicion  of  the  literary 
fellow;  and  they  have  often  acted  on  the  belief 
that  he  was  likely  to  be  little  better  than  an  im 
practical  theorist.  And  this  is  no  new  thing; 
Machiavelli,  for  example,  was  a  man  of  letters, 
with  the  acutest  insight  into  practical  politics, 
as  the  game  was  played  in  his  time  and  in  his 
country;  and  yet  the  code  of  practise  which  he 
drew  up  for  the  guidance  of  his  prince  was  not 
rewarded  by  the  gift  of  responsible  office.  The 
little  Italian  republics  of  the  Renascence, — like 
the  great  American  republic  centuries  later, — 
often  availed  themselves  of  their  men  of  letters  as 
envoys  to  other  powers;  but  they  rarely  entrusted 
these  literary  fellows  with  positions  of  authority. 
However  ably  and  adroitly  Dante  and  Boccaccio 
and  Petrarch  might  acquit  themselves  of  their 
missions  abroad,  they  were  not  rewarded  at  home 
310 


by  being  made  rulers  of  men.  And  here  in  the 
United  States,  while  we  have  been  glad  to  see 
ourselves  worthily  represented  in  foreign  parts 
by  Irving,  Bancroft  and  Lowell,  we  have  not 
often  been  moved  to  elect  men  of  letters  to  high 
place  in  the  nation  or  the  state;  and  even  when 
we  have  seemed  to  choose  them  for  office  the 
election  has  generally  gone  to  a  statesman  who 
was  also  an  author  rather  than  to  an  author  who 
was  also  a  statesman.  The  fervid  rhetorician 
who  wrote  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and 
the  historian  of  the  'Winning  of  the  West,'  are 
the  only  men  of  letters  who  have  ever  risen  to 
the  presidency;  and  their  interest  in  politics  is 
plainly  acuter  than  their  interest  in  authorship. 
In  the  opening  chapter  of  Cooper's  'Path 
finder,'  an  old  sailor  on  a  trip  thru  the  woods  is 
told  by  an  Indian  that  the  smoke  they  see  curling 
above  the  trees  must  come  from  a  fire  made  by  a 
white  man,  since  it  is  denser  than  it  should  be, 
because  it  arises  from  wood  wetter  than  any 
fuel  a  redskin  would  ever  use.  "Tuscarora  too 
cunning  to  make  fire  with  water,"  the  Indian  ex 
plains;  "  pale-face  too  much  book  and  burn  any 
thing;  much  book,  little  know."  And  the  old 
sailor  readily  admits  that  this  is  reasonable  and 
that  "the  chief  has  sensible  notions  of  things  in 
his  own  way."  A  little  later  in  the  same  tale, 
Leatherstocking  himself  declares  that  he  never 


"believed  much  in  the  learning  of  them  that 
dwell  in  towns,  for  I  never  yet  met  with  one  that 
had  an  eye  for  a  rifle  or  a  trail."  What  is  this 
but  a  belated  echo  of  Festus's  saying? — "Too 
much  learning  hath  made  thee  mad." 

Perhaps  a  part  of  the  hostility  toward  Cooper 
himself,  which  was  rampant  about  1840,  was 
due  to  the  disgust  of  the  journalists  of  that  pro 
vincial  period,  evoked  by  the  spectacle  of  a  man 
of  letters,  a  mere  teller  of  tales,  who  ventured  to 
hold  firmly  and  to  express  frankly  opinions  of 
his  own  about  the  social  order,  about  politics 
and  about  statecraft.  These  were  themes  which 
the  newspaper  men  reserved  for  themselves  and 
which  no  literary  fellow  had  a  right  to  meddle 
with.  The  journalists  of  those  days  may  have 
been  irritated  by  Cooper's  plain  speech  and  by 
his  curt  contempt;  but  they  had  a  deeper  griev 
ance.  They  deemed  it  a  gross  piece  of  imperti 
nence  for  a  novelist  to  stray  from  his  story-telling 
and  they  bade  him  stick  to  his  last.  In  like  man 
ner  the  practical  politicians  of  a  New  England 
state  have  recently  waxed  indignant  at  the  un 
warranted  interference  of  one  of  Cooper's  dis 
ciples  as  a  historical  novelist  when  this  story-teller 
made  bold  to  protest  against  political  conditions 
which  seemed  to  him  intolerable. 

It  is  only  fair  to  admit  unhesitatingly  that  there 
is  not  a  little  to  be  urged  in  behalf  of  this  belief 
312 


that  men  of  letters,  when  they  see  fit  to  discuss 
political  affairs,  often  talk  before  they  think. 
They  frequently  obtrude  political  opinions,  which 
are  not  the  cautious  result  of  a  deliberate  exam 
ination  of  the  whole  situation.  Perhaps  the  nov 
elist  and  the  poet  are  inclined  to  be  somewhat  im 
practical;  and  perhaps  they  are  not  more  likely 
than  any  other  member  of  the  community  to  be 
gifted  with  political  sagacity  and  with  statesman 
like  insight  into  the  needs  of  the  future.  Perhaps 
too  many  literary  fellows  are  wont  to  take  them 
selves  too  seriously  and  to  claim  that  their  pos 
session  of  "the  vision  and  the  faculty  divine" 
makes  them  wiser  than  the  rest  of  the  world. 
When  Brand es  suggested  to  Ibsen  in  1870  that 
the  dramatist  had  not  studied  politics  enough  to 
be  entitled  to  express  opinions,  he  retorted  that 
knowledge  came  to  him  by  intuition,  asserting 
that  "the  poet's  essential  task  is  to  see,  not  to 
reflect.  For  me,  in  particular,  there  would  be 
danger  in  too  much  reflection."  Victor  Hugo's 
habitual  attitude  was  as  absurdly  self-sufficient 
as  Ibsen's.  Even  poets  and  novelists  of  indisputa 
ble  rank  have  often  revealed  themselves  fantastic 
and  absurd  in  their  rash  adventures  into  political 
speculation.  In  the  ideal  communities  they  have 
vaguely  glimpst,  there  is  frequently  a  thin  un 
reality.  They  are  wont  to  balloon  themselves 
up  into  a  rarefied  atmosphere  where  the  ordinary 

3*3 


man  cannot  breathe.  The  plain  people  would 
have  been  sadly  misguided  had  they  attempted 
to  take  their  politics  from  Shelley,  for  one,  or 
from  Balzac,  for  another;  nor  would  they  have 
found  a  much  more  solid  support  in  Hugo  or  in 
Hawthorne.  Cooper  stands  out  as  an  exception 
among  later  poets  and  novelists,  in  that  he  had 
thought  seriously  about  the  organization  of 
society. 

It  is  in  his  delightful  biography  of  the  author 
of  the  Leatherstocking  Tales  that  Professor 
Lounsbury  has  occasion  to  refer  to  the  alleged 
poet,  Percival;  and  the  witty  critic  tells  us  that  as 
this  versifier  "invariably  proved  himself  entirely 
destitute  of  common  sense  in  his  ordinary  con 
duct,  he  was  led  to  fancy  that  he  was  not  only  a 
man  of  ability,  but  a  man  of  genius."  Not  a 
few  half-baked  geniuses  seem  to  have  accepted 
the  theory  implied,— that  genius  is  always  half- 
baked.  And  not  a  few  of  those  who  ought  to 
know  better  lazily  consent  to  this  false  view,  ad 
mitting  a  plea  of  the  irresponsibility  of  genius 
as  an  adequate  excuse  for  the  weaknesses  of 
Coleridge  and  Poe  and  for  the  vagaries  of  Villon 
and  Musset.  But  nothing  ought  to  be  clearer 
than  that  real  genius  never  shirks  responsibility 
and  that  it  is  ever  buttrest  by  common  sense. 
The  truly  great  men  have  been  idealists  who  had 
a  sustaining  grasp  on  the  realities  of  life. 
3H 


A  mandarin  complacency  is  not  a  character 
istic  of  the  truly  great  man  of  letters.  Rather  is 
it  the  truly  small  literary  fellow  who  is  likely  to 
reveal  an  insufferable  self-sufficiency  and  to  as 
sume  that  his  gift  of  expression  supplies  him  also 
with  opinions  worth  expressing.  The  narrow- 
mindedness  of  the  mere  literary  fellow  of  this 
shallow  species  was  never  more  cruelly  self-ex 
posed  than  in  the  journal  of  the  Goncourts.  They 
had  a  pretty  gift  of  description  and  even  a  cer 
tain  felicity  of  sentimental  analysis;  but  they 
were  appallingly  ignorant  and  fundamentally  un 
intelligent.  They  were  absolutely  incapable  of 
apprehending  a  stimulating  generalization;  and 
yet  their  marvellous  conceit  prevented  their  see 
ing  the  pitiful  figure  they  presented  at  the  Magny 
dinners  when  Taine  and  Renan  were  discussing 
questions  of  large  importance.  Not  only  were 
their  minds  hermetically  closed  to  a  new  idea, 
but  they  were  actually  unaware  that  it  was  new 
and  that  it  was  an  idea. 

Even  in  discussing  his  own  special  art,  the  poet 
and  the  novelist  may  disclose  his  sharp  limitations. 
While  many  of  the  most  suggestive  and  inspiring 
of  esthetic  essays  have  been  due  to  the  pens  of 
the  practitioners  of  the  several  arts,  Fromentin 
and  Mr.  La  Farge,  for  instance,  Stevenson  and 
Mr.  Howells, — artists  who  happened  also  to 
possess  a  keen  insight  into  the  principles  of  their 


several  crafts, — a  large  proportion  of  the  treatises 
on  poetry  and  on  fiction  written  by  the  poets 
themselves  and  by  the  novelists  are  devoid  of  any 
real  value.  The  writers  reveal  the  fact  that  even 
tho  they  may  have  the  gift  of  the  lyrist  or  of  the 
story-teller,  they  lack  the  gift  of  the  critic.  These 
essays  prove  once  again  that  the  artist  does  not 
need  to  know  more  about  his  art  than  how  to 
practise  it  and  that  he  may  himself  apply  his  prin 
ciples  unconsciously  and  yet  satisfactorily,  altho 
he  is  quite  unable  to  formulate  them  for  others, 
in  default  of  the  philosophic  endowment  which  is 
not  a  necessary  part  of  the  artistic  equipment. 

Mrs.  Siddons  and  Signer  Salvini  were  great 
actors,  beyond  all  question;  but  the  papers  they 
prepared  on  the  art  of  acting  were  entirely  with 
out  significance.  Victor  Hugo  was  the  fore 
most  of  French  poets;  but  his  famous  manifesto 
of  revolt,  the  preface  to  'Cromwell,'  in  which  he 
sought  to  declare  a  body  of  doctrine  and  to  lay 
down  the  law  of  poetic  evolution,  is  a  revelation 
of  his  incapacity  for  critical  thought.  So  also  the 
series  of  strenuous  essays  in  which  Zola,  a  novel 
ist  of  epic  power,  undertook  to  forecast  the  de 
velopment  of  fiction,  shows  that  he  failed  to 
understand  even  his  own  method.  Now,  if  these 
artists  and  these  men  of  letters  are  sometimes 
discovered  to  be  hopelessly  at  sea  when  they  set 
out  to  consider  their  own  special  departments  of 


" THOSE  LITERARY   FELLOWS" 

human  endeavor,  how  much  more  astray  are  they 
likely  to  find  themselves  when  they  go  outside 
the  boundaries  of  their  own  calling. 

It  was  in  his  incisive  essay  on  Shakspere  that 
Bagehot,  shrewdest  of  observers,  was  moved  to 
explain  "the  reason  why  so  few  good  books  are 
written."  He  asserted  that  it  was  because  "so 
few  people  that  can  write,  know  anything.  In 
general,  an  author  has  always  lived  in  a  room, 
has  read  books,  has  cultivated  science,  is  ac 
quainted  with  the  style  and  sentiments  of  the 
best  authors;  but  he  is  out  of  the  way  of  employ 
ing  his  own  eyes  and  ears.  He  has  nothing  to 
hear  and  nothing  to  see.  His  life  is  a  vacuum." 
This  may  seem  harsh;  but  it  is  not  unjust  to  a 
large  proportion  of  mere  literary  fellows.  They 
know  little  or  nothing  except  books.  They  have 
cultivated  the  means  of  expression;  but  they 
have  to  express  only  what  they  find  in  their 
libraries.  They  do  not  know  the  world  beyond 
their  bookshelves.  They  are  men  of  letters, 
not  men  of  action; — and  often  they  are  not  men 
of  thought.  When  one  of  them  happens  to  have 
a  doctrine  he  can  so  wing  his  message  with  flame 
that  it  reaches  the  hearts  of  men;  and  this  is 
what  made  Rousseau  so  powerful  and  so  danger 
ous.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  when  the  man  of 
action  happens  also  to  have  the  gift  of  expression, 
we  get  one  of  the  books  the  world  will  not  willingly 


"THOSE  LITERARY  FELLOWS" 

let  die, — the  'Commentaries'  of  Caesar,  for  in 
stance,  the  'Autobiography'  of  Cellini,  and  the 
'Memoirs'  of  Grant. 

The  attitude  of  the  practical  politician  and  of 
the  plain  people  is  thus  seen  to  have  a  certain 
justification  in  the  frequent  willingness  of  liter 
ary  fellows  to  declare  opinions  which  are  not  the 
result  of  study  and  which,  therefore,  had  better 
not  be  made  public.  To  say  this  is  to  suggest 
that  the  man  of  letters  who  uses  his  power  of 
expression  as  tho  it  gave  him  a  right  to  speak  with 
authority  about  themes  on  which  he  has  bestowed 
only  superficial  attention,  is  really  a  traitor  to  his 
craft,  in  that  he  exposes  the  whole  guild  of  au 
thors  to  a  contempt  which  is  not  without  excuse. 

Altho  it  may  be  confest  that  literary  fellows 
have  not  infrequently  laid  themselves  open  to 
the  reproach  of  talking  when  they  really  had 
nothing  to  say,  it  needs  to  be  noted  that  some 
portion  of  the  vague  distrust  of  the  plain  people 
here  in  the  United  States  has  had  another  origin. 
It  seems  to  be  a  survival  of  our  inheritance  from 
early  colonial  conditions,  when  the  sturdy  settler 
had  more  or  less  reason  to  look  with  suspicion  on 
all  possessors  of  superior  education  as  likely  to 
be  supporters  of  the  aristocratic  tradition  which 
he  was  striving  to  disestablish.  "In  the  minds 
not  only  of  the  Pilgrims  and  the  Puritans,  but 
also,  and  in  even  stronger  degree,  in  those  of  the 

318 


Quakers,  the  Huguenots  and  the  Palatinate 
Germans,  intellectual  activity  that  went  beyond 
the  limits  set  by  theology  or  practical  politics 
was  associated  with  culture,"  so  Professor 
Giddings  has  reminded  us;  and  "culture  was 
associated  with  leisure,  opportunity,  worldly 
indulgence.  These,  in  turn,  were  associated  with 
oppression."  The  same  acute  observer  suspects 
that  there  was  in  the  early  American  days  a 
feeling  of  hostility  to  worldly  learning  that  par 
took  of  class-conscious  antagonism;  "to  be  over 
much  interested  in  merely  intellectual  pursuits 
was  to  be  in  a  degree  disloyal  to  the  common 
cause." 

Closely  akin  to  this  easily  understood  hostility, 
there  is  another  inherited  feeling  born  of  our 
primitive  conditions  and  still  surviving  here  and 
there  long  after  those  conditions  have  departed. 
In  a  new  community,  blazing  its  way  in  a  new 
land  as  best  it  can,  everyone  must  do  everything 
for  himself,  since  there  is  no  one  at  hand  to  do 
it  for  him.  There  can  be  no  division  of  labor, 
no  specialization  of  function;  and  every  man 
is  compelled  to  be  a  jack-of-all  trades.  This 
breeds  in  the  race  self-reliant  resourcefulness; 
it  stimulates  ingenuity  and  inventiveness.  Men 
forced  to  find  out  new  ways  of  doing  old  things 
are  trained  to  face  an  emergency  and  to  front  the 
unexpected  need.  This  undaunted  facility  in 


turning  one's  hand  to  anything  is  now  an  ac 
quired  characteristic  of  the  American  people, 
and  it  is  one  of  our  most  precious  assets  in  the 
economic  struggle  for  the  markets  of  the  world. 

But  this  transmitted  inheritance  has  one  ob 
vious  disadvantage.  It  tends  to  spread  abroad 
a  belief  that  any  man  can  do  anything  about  as 
well  as  any  other  man  can  do  it.  It  leads  to  the 
assumption  that  any  man  is  fit  for  any  post.  It 
makes  us  contemptuous  of  all  special  knowledge 
and  resentful  of  all  expert  advice.  It  accentu 
ates  the  suspicion  which  the  average  man  of  our 
English-speaking  stock  has  been  wont  to  show 
toward  the  "  theorist,"  and  which  has  often 
tempted  him  to  the  overt  absurdity  of  declaring 
that  certain  things  "may  be  all  very  well  in  theory 
but  they  won't  work!" 

Once  more  candor  compels  the  confession  that 
now  and  again  the  practical  man's  contempt  for 
the  theorist  has  been  intensified  by  the  occasional 
mistakes  of  those  experts  who  were  not  quite  so 
expert  as  they  thought  themselves.  Once  upon 
a  time  a  theorist  proved  to  his  own  satisfaction 
that  a  ship  could  not  possibly  cross  the  Atlantic 
under  steam  because  it  never  could  carry  coal 
enough.  And  a  later  theorist  was  moved  to  ex 
plain  that  an  ice-yacht  could  not  possibly  go 
faster  than  the  wind. 

It  has  happened  also  that  rule-of-thumb  read- 
320 


iness  has  sometimes  achieved  an  immediate  re 
sult  not  so  swiftly  attained  by  a  more  scientific 
thoroness.  In  the  early  days  of  the  Civil  War 
a  general  halted  his  troops  on  the  banks  of  a  river 
half  a  mile  wide,  ordered  his  engineers  to  make 
plans  for  a  bridge  and  informed  a  New  England 
colonel  that  the  building  of  the  bridge  would 
be  confided  to  the  Yankee  regiment.  The  next 
afternoon  the  colonel  called  on  the  general,  who 
told  him  that  the  engineers  would  soon  have  the 
plans  ready.  The  colonel  smiled  as  he  answered : 
"I  don't  much  care  about  the  pictures; — you  see, 
my  boys  have  got  the  bridge  built!" 

In  a  community  where  this  sort  of  thing  could 
happen,  there  need  be  no  wonder  that  the  practical 
man  was  impatient  of  the  theorist  and  of  the  ex 
pert.  He  was  sufficient  to  himself,  and  he  had 
no  use  for  them.  But  as  backwoods  conditions 
disappeared,  division  of  labor  had  to  appear. 
Specialization  of  function  is  the  mark  of  advan 
cing  civilization.  There  is  no  better  evidence  of 
our  progress  than  the  avidity  with  which  the 
practical  men  in  charge  of  our  mighty  industrial 
enterprizes  are  now  seeking  out  experts  and 
snapping  up  all  the  theorists  within  reach.  And 
the  results  of  this  broadening  of  vision  are  in 
creasingly  evident  outside  the  field  of  industry. 
The  American  public  is  apparently  awakening  to 
the  fact  that  its  servants  had  better  be  trained 
321 


for  service,  and  that  its  consuls,  for  instance,  will 
be  able  to  benefit  the  commerce  of  the  country 
more  amply  if  they  have  been  forced  to  fit  them 
selves  for  their  special  work. 

Probably  this  broadening  of  vision  will  sooner 
or  later  effect  a  wholesome  change  in  the  attitude 
of  the  plain  people  toward  the  expert,  the  theorist 
and  the  literary  fellow.  Possibly  it  may  even 
modify  the  curiously  inaccurate  opinion  which 
the  average  man  seems  to  have  as  to  the  college 
professor.  This  opinion  is  apparently  a  sur 
vival  from  the  days  when  any  superannuated 
clergyman  was  accepted  as  an  adequate  occupant 
for  any  chair  in  any  institution  of  learning.  Half 
a  century  ago  the  program  of  studies  in  all  of  our 
colleges  was  narrow  and  rigid;  and  anybody  who 
had  taken  the  course  in  his  youth  held  himself 
ready  in  his  old  age  to  give  instruction  in  any  of 
the  prescribed  studies.  A  little  more  than  a  score 
of  years  ago,  whenever  any  chair  at  Columbia 
College  happened  to  fall  vacant,  an  application 
was  promptly  presented  by  a  certain  aged  alum 
nus  who  proffered  himself  as  the  proper  person 
for  the  post,  equally  willing  to  impart  instruction 
in  Greek  or  in  mathematics,  in  economics  or  in 
history.  While  this  worthy  clergyman  failed  of 
his  appointment  at  Columbia,  there  were  other 
men  no  better  equipt  who  did  secure  chairs  in 
other  institutions,  as  tho  to  confirm  the  departed 
322 


" THOSE   LITERARY   FELLOWS" 

belief  that  those  who  had  failed  in  everything 
else  were  at  least  capable  of  teaching. 

The  program  of  studies  has  been  enormously 
extended  of  late  and  it  now  covers  many  new 
subjects, — biology,  sociology,  psychology, — as  to 
which  the  man  in  the  street  can  have  only  the 
haziest  notions.  With  the  usual  conceit  of  ignor 
ance  he  is  unwilling  to  take  the  unknown  for  the 
magnificent.  Only  too  often  is  he  inclined  to 
dismiss  these  new  sciences  as  futile  and  to  hold 
those  who  teach  these  novel  subjects  as  vain 
triflers,  not  to  be  taken  seriously.  And  here 
once  more,  the  fault  is  sometimes  to  be  laid  at 
the  door  of  the  professors  themselves  rather  than 
at  that  of  the  plain  people.  Now  and  again  one 
of  them,  not  restrained  by  the  caution  his  scien 
tific  training  ought  to  have  instilled  in  him,  rashly 
adventures  himself  in  fields  in  which  his  own 
special  knowledge  gives  him  no  advantage,  and 
in  which  he  himself  is  no  wiser  than  the  next 
man.  It  is  indeed  a  sorry  spectacle  to  see  a  pro 
fessor  of  rhetoric  holding  forth  on  hypnotism  and 
a  professor  of  experimental  psychology  emitting 
empty  opinions  about  the  condition  of  English 
orthography  and  the  administration  of  the  crim 
inal  law.  Bumptious  outpourings  of  this  type  can 
not  fail  to  bring  a  certain  discredit  upon  scholar 
ship  itself  and  to  confirm  the  man  in  the  street 
in  a  contemptuous  distrust  of  the  man  of  science. 
323 


Professor  Lounsbury  has  reminded  us  that 
general  information  is  often  but  another  name  for 
specific  ignorance.  And  the  reverse  of  this  is 
true  also,  since  special  knowledge  is  not  infre 
quently  accompanied  by  a  lack  of  general  in 
formation.  Excessive  specialization  may  lead  to 
excessive  narrowness  of  vision.  Many  a  professor, 
scientifically  trained  in  Germany  and  conscien 
tiously  confining  himself  to  the  dative  case,  may 
go  thru  life  without  ever  attaining  that  knowledge 
of  the  world  and  that  wider  outlook  upon  life, 
which  a  broad  education  ought  to  nave  bestowed. 

While  there  are  a  few  professors  nere  and  there 
who  are  lacking  in  breadth,  and  wnile  there  are 
also  a  few  who  are  not  afraid  to  go  out  of  their 
depth  at  the  risk  of  floundering  in  muddy  water, 
a  large  proportion  of  the  men  who  now  hold  the 
more  important  chairs  in  our  more  important 
universities  have  not  allowed  their  scholarship 
to  crush  them.  They  are  scholars,  first  of  all, 
of  course,  and  this  they  should  be;  but  they  are 
also  good  citizens,  seriously  interested  in  the  teem 
ing  life  about  them  and  taking  a  manly  part  in 
the  movement  for  social  uplift.  They  profit  by 
their  academic  detachment  from  the  business  of 
making  money  to  attain  a  wider  perspective. 
They  tend  to  be  idealists,  like  the  men  of  let 
ters;  they  want  to  peer  into  the  future  and  to  re 
late  what  must  be  done  to-day  with  what  will 
324 


"THOSE  LITERARY  FELLOWS  7 

have  to  be  done  to-morrow.  Therefore  they  are 
dissatisfied  with  the  makeshift  devices  of  the 
practical  politicians,  who  often  seek  only  to  remove 
the  symptoms  of  a  distemper  in  the'  body  politic 
without  regard  to  the  real  cause  of  the  disease. 

As  they  have  no  hesitation  in  expressing  their 
disapproval  of  quack  legislation,  they  are  likely 
to  come  into  frequent  collision  with  both  the  busi 
ness  man  who  wants  an  evil  condition  remedied 
in  a  hurry  and  with  the  professional  politician 
who  is  swift  to  pass  any  act  which  he  thinks  the 
people  want,  regardless  of  its  ultimate  effect.  And 
here  is  a  solid  reason  for  the  hostility  they  often 
arouse.  The  practical  man  of  affairs,  whether 
in  business  or  in  politics,  is  prone  to  take  short 
views  and  to  hold  that  sufficient  unto  the  day  is 
the  evil  thereof.  Therfore  he  is  moved  to  swift 
wrath  when  the  college  professors  provoke  him 
by  their  calm  assertion  that  no  pill  has  ever  yet 
cured  the  earthquake. 

While  the  well-meaning  man  who  wishes  to 
have  everything  made  better  overnight  is  offended 
by  the  disinterested  attitude  taken  by  the  college 
professor  and  by  the  literary  fellow  toward  pub 
lic  questions,  the  man  who  is  actually  profiting 
by  present  conditions  is  fiercely  resentful.  He  is 
belligerent  in  defending  his  own,  and  he  is  skeptical 
as  to  the  disinterestedness  of  his  opponents.  He 
impugns  their  good  faith;  he  imputes  unworthy 

325 


motives;  and  he  relieves  his  feelings  by  lumping 
the  literary  fellow  and  the  college  professor  in  a 
comprehensive  anathema.  And  here  he  exhibits 
a  class-conscious  antagonism  too  frankly  selfish 
not  to  defeat  itself  by  self-disclosure. 

It  is  an  evidence  of  the  common  sense  of  the 
American  people  that  the  prejudice  against  the 
college  professor,  like  that  against  the  man  of 
letters,  is  rapidly  dying  down  and  that  there  is 
beginning  to  be  public  recognition  and  public  ap 
preciation  of  the  service  they  are  rendering  to  the 
Commonwealth.  This  recognition  is  displayed 
in  the  increasing  frequency  with  which  their  ad 
vice  and  their  aid  is  sought  in  solving  the  prob 
lems  of  society,  and  in  the  greater  weight  which 
is  attacht  to  their  opinions  upon  the  subjects  they 
have  studied.  This  appreciation  is  due  partly 
to  the  fact  that  the  public  is  at  last  discovering  the 
improvement  in  the  quality  of  the  professors  in 
consequence  of  the  development  of  the  American 
university,  more  especially  in  the  larger  urban 
communities;  and  it  is  due  also  in  part  to  a  grow 
ing  understanding  of  the  real  value  and  impor 
tance  of  the  expert  and  the  theorist. 

It  is  easy  to  give  striking  instances  of  this  in 
creasing  reliance  of  the  public  upon  the  university 
for  expert  aid;  and  perhaps  I  may  be  pardoned 
if  I  present  a  few  of  them  from  the  recent  history 
of  the  institution  with  which  I  am  most  familiar. 
326 


Probably  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  select  ex 
amples  as  significant  from  the  later  experiences 
of  any  other  of  the  larger  universities  in  the  larger 
cities.  The  admirable  school-law  of  New  York, 
now  incorporated  in  the  charter  of  the  city,  was 
due  largely  to  the  skill  and  foresight  of  one 
Columbia  professor;  and  another  Columbia  pro 
fessor  was  a  member  of  the  commission  which 
prepared  the  charter  itself.  A  third  sat  on  the 
commission  for  revising  the  tax-system  of  the 
state;  and  a  fourth  had  a  seat  in  the  Panama 
Canal  commission.  A  fifth  went  out  to  San 
Francisco  to  take  charge  of  the  relief-work  im 
mediately  after  the  earthquake;  and  a  sixth  has 
had  to  ask  for  leave  twice,  first  to  act  as  assistant 
Secretary  of  State  and  then  to  serve  as  secretary 
of  the  commission  which  signed  the  treaty  of 
peace  between  Spain  and  the  United  States. 
Two  of  my  colleagues  have  recently  declined  calls 
to  take  charge  of  the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts  in 
Boston  and  of  the  Smithsonian  Institute  in  Wash 
ington,  while  a  third  has  accepted  the  presidency 
of  the  Carnegie  Institution. 

It  would  be  easy  also  to  bring  forward  many 
instances  of  the  practical  efficiency  of  men  of 
letters.  One  literary  fellow,  here'  in  New  York, 
laid  the  solid  foundation  of  tenement-house  re 
form.  Another,  in  Washington,  prevented  the 
dismemberment  of  the  Chinese  Empire.  A 

327 


"THOSE  LITERARY  FELLOWS" 

third  had  establisht  the  Naval  Academy  at  An 
napolis  against  the  protests  of  the  practical  poli 
ticians  of  his  time.  It  was  a  literary  fellow,  risen 
to  be  prime  minister  of  Great  Britain,  who  had 
the  daring  imagination  which  led  him  to  acquire 
control  of  the  Suez  Canal,  and  thus  to  bring  about 
the  ultimate  supremacy  of  his  country  over  Egypt. 
And  it  is  to  the  undying  honor  of  the  men  of 
letters  of  France — the  so-called  "  intellectuals  "- 
that  in  the  blackest  hours  of  the  Dreyfus  iniquity, 
they  stept  forward  to  insist  on  the  duty  of  doing 
right  even  tho  the  heavens  should  fall. 

We  can  see  a  good  augury  for  the  future  in 
the  prominent  position  now  awarded  by  public 
opinion  in  America  to  the  college  president. 
The  more  or  less  tolerant  contempt  which  the 
average  man  has  sometimes  displayed  toward 
the  mere  professor  he  has  never  felt  toward  the 
president.  He  knows  little  enough  about  the 
work  of  the  professor  and  about  the  needful  quali 
fications  for  any  particular  chair;  but  he  cannot 
help  perceiving  that  the  president  must  be  a  man 
of  affairs,  having  a  knowledge  of  the  practical 
things  of  life,  such  as  the  president  of  a  bank  or 
of  a  railroad  needs  must  have.  Altho  the  man 
in  the  street  does  not  happen  to  know  it,  the 
American  college  president  occupies  a  position 
without  parallel  in  Europe;  and  this  position, 
lofty  and  detacht,  gives  him  a  platform  from 
328 


"THOSE  LITERARY  FELLOWS" 

which  to  speak  with  authority.  Any  one  who 
will  call  the  roll  of  the  men  now  at  the  head  of 
our  older  institutions  of  learning  cannot  fail  to 
be  struck  with  the  fact  that  almost  every  one  of 
them  is  a  scholar,  who  is  also  far  more  than  a 
mere  scholar.  And  yet  they  are,  all  of  them, 
professors  who  have  been  promoted  from  the 
ranks. 

College  professor  and  literary  fellow,  expert 
and  theorist,  seem  at  last  to  be  coming  into  their 
own.  It  was  in  the  nineteenth  century  that  the 
professional  politician  was  guilty  of  the  sneer 
which  has  served  as  a  text  for  these  random 
remarks.  Long  before  the  twenty-first  century 
shall  loom  before  us,  we  may  expect  to  find  that 
the  man  in  the  street  will  have  experienced  a 
change  of  heart.  Perhaps  we  may  even  hope  for 
a  happy  day  when  no  smile  will  come  to  any  lip 
on  reading  the  cry  of  Napoleon's  soldiers  in 
Egypt  as  they  formed  square  to  repel  the  charge 
of  the  Mamelukes: — " Asses  and  savans  to  the 
center!" 

But  in  order  that  this  change  of  opinion  may 
be  effected,  it  is  incumbent  on  the  literary  fel 
lows  and  the  college  professors,  on  the  theorists 
and  the  experts,  so  to  control  their  utterances  and 
so  to  direct  their  energies  that  the  plain  people 
will  have  no  excuse  for  resuming  again  the  suspicious 
attitude  of  bygone  days.  It  will  be  their  duty  to 

329 


seek  to  attain  to  the  type  of  the  cultivated  man 
as  set  forth  by  President  Eliot,— "  not  a  weak, 
critical,  fastidious  creature,  vain  of  a  little  ex 
clusive  information  or  of  an  uncommon  knack 
in  Latin  verse  or  mathematical  logic,"  but  "a 
man  of  quick  perceptions,  broad  sympathies  and 
wide  affinities,  responsive  yet  independent,  self- 
reliant  but  deferential,  loving  truth  and  candor 
but  also  moderation  and  proportion,  courageous 
but  gentle,  not  finisht  but  perfecting."  And 
the  closer  we  can  come  up  to  this  ideal,  which  is 
Emerson's  also,  the  less  we  shall  fall  behind  that 
of  Isocrates,  who  declared  that  by  an  educated 
man  he  understood  "one  who  can  deal  with  all 
that  comes  upon  him  day  by  day;  who  is  honest 
and  mannerly  in  society;  who  rules  his  desires; 
who  is  not  spoilt  by  good  fortune." 

(1909.) 


330 


STANDARDS  OF  SUCCESS 


[This  address  was  delivered  at  the  centenary  of  Miami 
University  in  June,  1909,  and  again  at  the  opening  ex 
ercises  of  Columbia  University  in  September,  1909.] 


STANDARDS  OF  SUCCESS 


NOT  long  ago  a  distinguisht  lawyer  of  the 
Middle  West,  pleading  the  cause  of  one 
of  the  societies  for  improving  civic  conditions, 
riskt  the  assertion  that  the  higher  life  of  the 
American  people  "has  been  drugged  with  a  spirit 
of  mercenary  materialism,"  and  that  "political 
self-seeking  and  unlimited  corporate  greed  have 
become  a  national  religion,"  while  material  ag 
grandizement  is  "leading  us  in  the  direction  of 
national  decay."  Altho  this  charge  is  overdrawn 
and  is  likely  to  be  thrown  out  by  the  grand  jury 
of  enlightened  public  opinion,  there  is  conviction 
in  his  later  statement  that  mere  material  pros 
perity  is  what  is  too  commonly  known  as  "suc 
cess  in  life,"  whereas  "in  reality  it  is  failure," 
for  "it  confounds  the  end  with  the  means," 
since  we  have  reacht  only  "the  portals  of  success 
when  we  have  become  wealthy  and  influential. 
Our  culture  is  more  or  less  shallow,  and  our  lives 
are  more  or  less  limited  and  crippled,  unless  we 
are  patriotic  and  unselfish.  We  are  like  plants 
333 


STANDARDS   OF  SUCCESS 

which  put  forth  the  buds  of  promise  but  never 
reach  the  blossoming  stage." 

It  may  be  admitted,  at  once,  that  in  the  mouth 
of  the  ordinary  American  of  to-day  the  word 
''success"  is  usually  interpreted  to  mean  material 
prosperity,  the  attainment  of  a  comfortable 
fortune,  the  acquisition  of  the  assured  position 
which  money  generally  gives.  But  when  we  ask 
whether  this  interpretation  is  either  specially 
American  or  specially  novel,  we  are  likely  to 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is  neither,  and  that 
ever  since  our  modern  civilization  emerged  out 
of  the  Dark  Ages,  there  has  never  been  a  time 
or  a  place  when  the  average  man  found  any  other 
meaning  in  the  word.  To  the  large  majority  of 
mankind  always  and  everywhere  the  outward 
and  visible  sign  of  success  is  "money  in  the 
bank," — or  whatever  may  be  the  immediate 
equivalent  of  this. 

Indeed,  this  must  needs  endure  so  long  as  most 
men  have  to  spend  their  lives  battling  with  the 
waves  in  the  strenuous  effort  to  keep  themselves 
afloat.  To  measure  success  in  terms  of  material 
prosperity  may  be  sordid  and  it  may  be  dangerous 
to  the  commonwealth;  but  it  is  natural  enough 
and  it  marks  no  sudden  fall  from  grace.  Even 
tho  this  standard  of  success  may  seem  to  some 
to  be  more  exclusively  accepted  by  us  just  now, 
the  acceptance  is  not  at  all  peculiar  to  the  Ameri- 
334 


STANDARDS   OF  SUCCESS 

can  of  the  twentieth  century.  It  is  only  what 
has  long  been  visible  both  in  France  and  in  Eng 
land  ;  and  the  industrial  development  in  Germany 
has  brought  about  the  same  state  of  affairs  even 
in  that  land  of  soldiers  and  philosophers.  When 
one  of  my  Columbia  colleagues  was  a  student  at 
Berlin  thirty  years  ago,  he  was  once  told  by  a 
native  that  the  Americans  "worshipt  the  dollar," 
—to  which  he  promptly  retorted  that  the  Germans 
had  a  similar  god,  who  was  only  one-quarter  as 
powerful. 

The  real  question  that  confronts  us  when  we 
seek  to  attain  an  understanding  of  the  present 
attitude  of  the  American  people  is  not  whether 
success  is  here  taken  to  mean  material  prosperity, 
but  whether  material  prosperity  is  not  received 
by  us  as  the  final  test  of  success  and  as  the  sole 
touchstone  of  a  finisht  career.  And  this  is  a 
question  as  important  as  it  is  difficult  to  answer. 
If  we  are  admitting  that  the  acquisition  of  money 
is  the  only  standard  of  a  well-spent  life,  then  in 
deed  are  we  in  danger  of  confounding  the  end 
with  the  means.  Then  are  we  hailing  the  man 
who  has  merely  entered  the  portal  as  tho  he 
had  conquered  the  inner  citadel.  "  What  shall  it 
profit  a  man  if  he  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose 
his  own  soul?" 

While  material  prosperity  is,  of  necessity,  the 
immediate  aim  of  the  average  man,  in  the  thick 
335 


STANDARDS  OF  SUCCESS 

of  the  struggle  for  life,  it  ought  not  to  be  his  only 
aim;  and  just  so  soon  as  he  can  feel  his  feet  firm 
on  the  ground  beneath  him,  it  ought  not  to  be  his 
chief  aim.  And  what  may  be,  for  a  while,  al 
most  the  whole  duty  of  the  inferior  man,  is  only 
a  small  part  of  the  duty  of  the  superior  man. 
When  the  desperate  dread  of  want  is  no  longer 
driving  us  to  leisureless  toil,  and  when  a  fair 
measure  of  material  prosperity  has  been  achieved 
by  abundant  energy  or  by  early  advantage,  then 
the  further  accumulation  of  wealth  ceases  to  de 
serve  exclusive  attention,  since  it  is  no  longer  need 
ful  to  the  individual  or  to  the  community.  To 
continue  to  put  forth  all  one's  power  for  the  sake 
of  needless  acquisition  is  a  short-sighted  selfish 
ness  which  is  not  success  but  failure.  It  is  a 
failure  of  the  individual,  which,  if  widely  multi 
plied,  must  be  fatal  to  the  community. 

There  is  no  denying  that  there  are  now  in  the 
United  States  glaring  examples  of  this  failure, 
masquerading  as  success;  nor  can  it  be  doubted 
that  many  if  not  most  of  those  who  are  in  the  thick 
of  the  strife  are  willing  enough  to  welcome  this 
sham  as  tho  it  was  the  genuine  article.  They 
are,  as  it  were,  hypnotized  by  the  revolving  glit 
ter  before  their  eyes;  and  they  are  in  no  condition 
to  appreciate  the  truth  of  Beecher's  saying  that 
"  there  are  a  great  many  poor  men  who  are  rich  and 
a  great  many  rich  men  who  are  poor."  They  do 
336 


STANDARDS  OF  SUCCESS 

not  see  that  if  they  got  what  they  are  seeking, 
they  would  swiftly  discover  the  imposture  that 
they  played  on  themselves.  They  cannot  be 
expected  to  find  this  out  until  it  is  too  late,  until 
they  have  failed  according  to  their  own  tempo 
rary  standard,  or  until  they  have  succeeded  ac 
cording  to  the  standard  which  will  betray  them 
in  the  end.  They  have  energy  and  determination 
and  ability;  but  they  are  bending  their  powers 
to  the  attainment  of  an  object  which  will  never 
adequately  reward  the  effort.  They  have  not 
taken  time  to  plan  the  journey  before  them  and 
to  decide  whether  they  really  want  to  arrive  at 
the  port  for  which  they  seem  to  be  steering. 
"Most  men,"  so  Lowell  has  told  us,  "make  the 
voyage  of  life,  as  if  they  carried  sealed  orders, 
which  they  were  not  to  open  until  they  were  in 
mid-ocean." 

But  while  there  are  too  many  men  in  the  United 
States  who  are  now  recklessly  making  this  blunder, 
they  have  had  predecessors  not  a  few  in  other 
lands.  Even  the  wisest  of  men,  who  might  be 
expected  to  have  laid  out  the  course  carefully 
and  cautiously,  have  been  not  infrequently  ship- 
wreckt  by  the  false  charts  they  have  made  for 
themselves  and  by  the  faithless  compass  they 
have  chosen  to  follow.  For  example,  consider 
the  career  of  Bacon;  no  one  ever  sought  success 
more  deliberately  than  he  did  and  with  more 

337 


STANDARDS   OF  SUCCESS 

abundant  faculties;  and  his  essays, — wherein  we 
may  read  that  "all  rising  to  great  place,  is  by  a 
winding  stair," — might  be  the  handbook  of  those 
who  wish  to  make  their  way  in  the  world  by  worldly 
ways.  But  who  is  there  now  who  wants  the  suc 
cess  that  Bacon  attained  at  the  last?  Or  turn  to 
Machiavelli,  whose  powerful  intellect  was  only 
a  little  inferior  to  Bacon's;  no  one  ever  laid  down 
more  boldly  the  principles  whereby  a  ruthless 
man  might  carve  his  path  to  success  as  he  saw  it; 
and  his  precepts  seem  to  be  accepted  as  valid 
and  to  be  relentlessly  applied  by  certain  of  the 
industrial  princes  of  to-day.  Yet  the  name  of 
Machiavelli  is  now  a  by-word  and  a  hissing; 
and  the  fact  that  this  fate  is  not  wholly  deserved 
does  not  help  him. 

Contrast  Bacon  and  Machiavelli  with  Franklin, 
whose  moral  code  may  be  lacking  in  elevation, 
but  whose  practical  wisdom  was  lofty  enough 
He  preached  a  humdrum  doctrine,  that  honesty 
is  the  best  policy,  that  a  penny  saved  is  a  penny 
gained,  and  that  if  you  keep  your  shop  your  shop 
will  keep  you, — precepts  which  bore  fruit  in  the 
lives  of  countless  thousands  of  his  future  fellow- 
citizens.  But  he  accomplisht  the  rarer  feat  of 
conforming  his  practise  to  his  preaching;  and 
thereby  he  found  himself  in  his  maturity  in  the 
possession  of  a  comfortable  fortune,  whereupon 
he  gave  up  the  task  of  making  any  more  money 

338 


STANDARDS   OF  SUCCESS 

and  lookt  out  for  an  ampler  and  more  congenial 
field  of  labor.  To  a  man  of  active  mind  and  ener 
getic  body,  leisure  could  be  but  the  liberty  of 
choice  of  a  more  interesting  occupation.  In  his 
own  freedom  from  mere  money-making  he  saw 
the  opportunity  for  a  larger  public  service.  He 
has  told  us  that  he  early  made  the  rule  of  never 
asking  for  an  office  and  of  never  declining  one; 
and  in  the  second  half  of  his  career  he  was  labor 
ing  as  effectively  for  the  public  as  in  the  first  half 
he  had  toiled  for  himself. 

Franklin  was  able  to  aid  in  achieving  the  liberty 
of  his  native  land,  only  because  he  had  first 
won  freedom  for  himself.  "Those  only  are  free 
men,"  said  Froude,  "who  have  had  patience  to 
learn  the  conditions  of  a  useful  and  honorable 
existence,  who  have  overcome  their  own  igno 
rance  and  their  own  selfishness,  who  have  become 
masters  of  themselves."  It  was  because  Franklin 
had  been  untiring  in  overcoming  his  ignorance 
and  because  he  was  masterful  in  conquering  his 
own  selfishness  that  he  was  able  to  fill  out  perhaps 
the  most  outwardly  successful  career  yet  achieved 
by  any  American,  even  if  we  admit  that  his  lim 
itations  shut  him  out  from  certain  of  the  high 
est  things  in  life.  His  later  and  larger  success 
was  due  to  his  never  being  satisfied  with  mere 
material  prosperity,  to  his  never  confounding  the 
means  with  the  end,  and  to  his  generous  under- 
339 


STANDARDS   OF  SUCCESS 

standing  of  the  duty  of  every  man  toward  his 
fellows. 

It  was  Lamennais  who  declared  that  "human 
society  is  founded  on  the  self-surrender  or  sacri 
fice  of  man  to  men,  or  of  every  man  to  all  men; 
and  sacrifice  is  the  essence  of  every  true  society. " 
Franklin  might  have  smiled  at  the  eloquence  of 
the  phrase;  but  he  would  have  acknowledged 
its  truth, — and  he  might  even  have  explained 
that  self-surrender  and  sacrifice  need  not  be 
painful  and  that  in  the  long  run  they  are  often 
pleasurable  in  the  highest  degree.  Certainly 
he  would  have  approved  of  a  passage  in  one  of 
President  Butler's  addresses,  which  insists  that 
"the  moral  education  of  the  individual  human 
being  to  the  point  where  he  realizes  the  squalid 
poverty  of  selfishness  and  the  boundless  riches 
of  service,  will  alone  lift  civilization  to  a  higher 
plane  and  make  true  democracy  secure." 

The  moral  education  of  the  average  human 
being,  here  and  now,  in  the  United  States,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  has  not  reacht 
this  point.  Indeed,  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
it  has  ever  been  reacht  or  whether  it  will  ever 
be  reacht  by  the  average  human  being  in  any 
country  at  any  time, — for  reasons  which  are  ob 
vious  enough.  And  it  may  be  that  the  accept 
ance  of  material  prosperity  as  the  sole  standard 
of  success  has  been  wider  in  the  past  few  years 
340 


STANDARDS   OF   SUCCESS 

in  America  than  it  ever  was  before.  But  to  ad 
mit  this,  is  not  to  admit  that  "  political  self-seek 
ing  and  unlimited  corporate  greed  have  become 
a  national  religion,"  with  the  result  of  drugging 
the  higher  life  with  a  "  spirit  of  mercenary  mate 
rialism."  The  evidence  is  plain  to-day  that  even 
tho  we  may  have  started  along  the  road  to  na 
tional  decay,  lured  by  the  glamor  of  the  success 
which  glitters,  we  have  seen  the  danger-signals  in 
time,  and  that  we  are  now  ready  to  retrace  our 
steps,  even  if  we  have  not  yet  regained  the  right 
path. 

II 

IT  is  a  good  sign  that  the  attitude  toward  the 
very  rich  seems  to  be  changing  of  late.  They  are 
beginning  to  feel  themselves  more  or  less  under 
suspicion,  however  much  the  society-reporter 
may  delight  in  snobbish  adulation.  No  longer  is 
there  a  belief  that  the  mere  heaping  up  of  money 
is  a  sufficient  service  to  the  community.  There 
is  an  increasing  tendency  to  apply  a  stricter  moral 
standard  and  to  ask  embarrassing  questions. 
There  is  a  desire  to  know  where  the  money  came 
from  and  whether  it  was  honestly  come  by.  There 
is  a  manifest  intention  to  sharpen  the  laws  so 
that  processes  of  acquisition  which  may  have  been 
legal  even  if  they  were  immoral  shall  hereafter 
be  under  the  control  of  the  courts.  There  is 


STANDARDS   OF   SUCCESS 

awakening  to  the  value  of  social  service.  There 
is  a  keener  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  really 
useful  citizens  cannot  be  measured  by  the  money 
they  possess.  There  is  a  closer  scrutiny  of  char 
acter  and  a  higher  appreciation  of  its  loftier  types. 
There  is  a  cordial  welcome  for  those  new  men 
in  public  life,  to  some  of  whom  it  is  possible 
to  apply  the  noble  words  in  which  the  younger 
Pliny  described  one  of  his  friends, — "who  did 
nothing  for  ostentation  but  all  for  conscience, 
who  sought  his  reward  of  virtue  in  itself  and  not 
in  the  praise  of  men." 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  a  little  unfortunate 
that  there  seems  to  be  intensifying  a  prejudice 
toward  the  very  rich  as  a  class,  without  due  dis 
crimination  between  those  who  have  inherited 
fortunes  honestly  gained  and  those  who  have 
amassed  large  wealth  by  predatory  devices.  At 
times,  this  prejudice  may  bear  hardly  on  those 
"who  think  their  innoxious  indolence  their  se 
curity," — to  borrow  Burke' s  phrase.  But  there 
are  only  too  many  among  the  inheritors  of  honest 
fortunes  who  mistake  notoriety  for  fame  and 
who  alienate  sympathy  by  foolish  prodigality 
and  by  silly  display.  Some  of  them  seem  to 
spend  large  sums  merely  as  a  means  of  killing 
time, — forgetting  that  there  is  no  known  way  of 
killing  eternity.  Some  of  them  reveal  the  laxity 
of  morals  which  is  ever  likely  to  result  from  the 
342 


STANDARDS   OF   SUCCESS 

conjunction  of  wealth  and  idleness.  Some  of 
them  have  taken  part  in  that  matrimonial  ex 
portation  of  heiresses,  which  seems  especially 
revolting  to  the  plain  people.  Most  of  them  have 
failed  to  grasp  the  fact  that  an  industrial  com 
munity  offers  few  opportunities  to  the  selfish  idler 
who  has  come  into  the  stored  savings  of  a  father 
honored  for  his  industry.  A  spendthrift  who 
wastes  the  wealth  he  has  inherited  is  likely  to 
get  his  money's  worth  of  repentance,  sooner  or 
later;  but  not  a  few  of  the  fortunes  recently  in 
herited  have  been  so  vast  that  the  weakling  heir 
is  really  in  no  danger  of  reducing  himself  to  actual 
poverty.  He  goes  on  his  way,  leading  an  empty 
life  of  lavish  luxury,  setting  up  a  false  standard 
for  others  and  having  very  little  real  enjoyment 
himself. 

The  same  unfortunate  fate  seems  to  have  be 
fallen  some  of  those  who,  after  a  youth  of  honest 
toil,  have  suddenly  found  themselves  in  full  man 
hood  in  the  possession  of  large  fortunes  which 
they  do  not  know  how  to  put  to  any  good  use. 
Perhaps  this  class  is  larger  just  now  in  the  United 
States  than  it  has  ever  been  before  anywhere  else, 
in  consequence  of  the  recent  gigantic  combina 
tions  of  industrial  enterprizes,  whereby  compar 
atively  young  fellows  who  had  been  engaged  in 
building  up  the  several  businesses,  laboring  with 
all  their  might  and  rinding  their  fun  in  their  hard 
343 


STANDARDS   OF   SUCCESS 

work,  have  suddenly  discovered  themselves  out  of 
a  job,  and  paid  off  with  a  huge  sum  of  money 
which  a  few  years  earlier  would  have  seemed  to 
them  beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice.  It  is  not 
to  be  wondered  that  some  of  them  lose  their  heads 
and  that  sometimes  they  lose  their  feet  also. 

It  is  in  his  narrative  of  Catiline's  conspiracy 
that  the  shrewd  Sallust  points  out  the  reason  for 
the  failure  of  certain  of  his  earlier  contemporaries 
in  the  final  years  of  the  Roman  republic.  "Men 
who  had  easily  borne  misery  and  danger  and  who 
had  gone  thru  the  most  embarrassing  and  the 
most  painful  difficulties  without  weakness,  bent 
beneath  the  weight  of  leisure  and  wealth.  What 
made  their  misfortune  was  that  they  had  attained 
what  men  ordinarily  desire."  In  those  dark 
days  the  social  organization  of  Rome  was  crum 
bling  and  private  corruption  hastened  public 
disintegration.  Here  in  the  United  States  the 
social  organization  seems  to  be  sound,  and  to  be 
able  to  adjust  itself  in  time  to  changing  condi 
tions.  Even  if  society  is  injured  by  the  mis 
deeds  and  by  the  dangerous  example  of  these 
energetic  possessors  of  new  wealth,  it  is  not  actually 
imperilled.  They  can  harm  the  commonwealth 
only  a  little,  even  tho  they  wreck  their  own  lives. 

They  may  even  be  entitled  to  some  small  share 
of  sympathy,  for  they  are  not  ill-meaning  even 
if  they   are   ill-doing.    Their  early  years   have 
344 


STANDARDS   OF   SUCCESS 

been  arduous,  but  full  and  rich  in  satisfactory 
achievement.  By  personal  experience  they  were 
proving  the  truth  of  Stevenson's  assertion  that 
"to  travel  hopefully  is  a  better  thing  than  to  ar 
rive,  and  the  true  success  is  to  labor."  All  at 
once  their  work  has  been  taken  from  them;  and 
they  have  had  no  time  to  teach  themselves  how 
to  play.  They  find  themselves  with  no  restrain 
ing  duties  of  the  kind  they  are  accustomed  to; 
and  they  have  the  widest  opportunities  for  so- 
called  "  pleasure-seeking."  At  first  they  can 
scarcely  be  expected  to  bear  in  mind  that  real 
relaxation  is  possible  only  in  the  interstices  of 
solid  work.  They  can  hardly  help  rushing  forth 
ardently;  and  by  a  strenuous  pleasure-seeking 
for  its  own  sake,  they  soon  atrophy  the  function 
of  wholesome  enjoyment.  In  this  pursuit,  for 
which  they  have  had  no  preparation,  they  have 
no  models  before  them  but  the  idlers  of  inherited 
wealth.  Trained  to  make  money  only  and  not 
to  spend  it,  they  are  tempted  to  set  up  as  rivals 
of  these  idlers  and  to  devote  themselves  to  a  dis 
play  which  is  wasteful  as  well  as  unsatisfactory, 
and  to  a  self-indulgence  which  has  been  relaxt 
from  all  restraint. 

It  would  be  evidence  in  favor  of  the  contention 
that  the  higher  life  of  the  American  people  "had 
been  drugged  with  a  spirit  of  mercenary  materi 
alism,"  if  we  found  that  the  average  man  was 
345 


STANDARDS   OF   SUCCESS 

looking  up  to  these  lusty  and  lustful  spenders  as 
creatures  to  be  envied  and  to  be  copied.  In 
deed,  if  this  vulgar  extravagance  was  widely  ac 
cepted  as  the  proof  of  success  in  life,  then  might 
we  be  tempted  to  despair  of  the  republic.  But 
this  is  not  the  case;  in  fact,  it  is  very  far  from  being 
the  case.  The  attitude  of  the  average  man  toward 
those  guilty  of  this  splurging  magnificence  is 
rarely  envious;  rather  is  it  to  some  extent  con 
temptuous.  For  the  most  part  their  doings  have 
awakened  an  amused  scorn,  when  they  have  not 
aroused  a  wholesome  anger.  The  temper  of  the 
people  is  healthy  enough,  even  if  the  judgments 
of  the  people  are  often  swift,  unsympathetic  and 
unsparing.  Probably  the  spectacle  of  the  pitiful 
efforts  of  these  workers  turned  idlers  to  get  some 
thing  for  their  money  has  not  been  without  profit 
to  the  body  politic,  in  that  it  has  stirred  the  con 
science  to  insist  on  a  stricter  accountability  to 
the  moral  law. 

It  was  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
that  Lowell  wrote  to  his  nephew  a  word  of  ad 
vice,  which  is  as  valid  to-day  as  it  was  three  score 
years  ago.  "Pin  this  up  in  your  memory, — 
that  Nature  abhors  the  credit  system  and  that 
we  never  get  anything  in  life  till  we  have  paid 
for  it.  Anything  good,  I  mean;  evil  things  we 
always  pay  for  afterwards,  and  always  when  we 
find  it  hardest  to  do  it."  And  this  is  curiously 
346 


STANDARDS   OF  SUCCESS 

like  a  statement  of  his  own  creed  that  Huxley 
once  wrote  to  Kingsley, — "The  ledger  of  the 
Almighty  is  strictly  kept,  and  every  one  of  us  has 
the  balance  of  his  operations  paid  over  to  him  at 
the  end  of  every  minute  of  his  existence."  The 
antics  of  the  idlers,  whether  their  wealth  is  in 
herited  or  suddenly  thrust  upon  them,  are  a  spectacle 
for  gods  and  men;  but  there  is  no  doubt  who  will 
have  to  pay  the  piper  for  their  dancing.  It  is 
with  little  desire  to  figure  in  the  whirling  that  the 
most  of  us  gaze  at  the  sorry  show. 

While  the  public  attitude  toward  the  idle  rich 
of  either  breed  is  never  admiring,  rarely  envious 
and  generally  contemptuous,  its  attitude  toward 
the  powerful  group  of  masterful  manipulators 
of  the  necessities  of  life  is  distinctly  hostile.  Their 
example  has  been  as  demoralizing  as  their  mis 
chievous  activity  has  been  dangerous.  But  this 
the  plain  people  now  perceive;  and  as  a  result 
the  plain  people  are  asking  for  laws  which  have 
iron  teeth  and  for  prosecutions  which  will  put 
prison-stripes  on  a  few  of  these  predatory  finan 
ciers.  Probably  these  self-seeking  captains  of 
industry  have  been  astonisht  of  late  when  they 
discovered  their  unfortunate  position  in  public 
opinion.  Possibly  they  may  even  be  moved  to 
inquire  whether  the  success  they  have  achieved 
is  really  worth  while, — whether  it  is  worth  what 
they  have  paid  for  it.  Certainly  they  may 

347 


STANDARDS   OF   SUCCESS 

awaken  to  the  fact  that  a  man  can  scarcely  be 
called  successful  in  life  when  a  large  proportion 
of  his  fellow-citizens  not  only  believe  that  he 
ought  to  be  in  jail,  but  would  like  to  see  him 
there.  Success  is  at  least  a  little  dubious  when 
men  of  immense  wealth  have  to  go  into  hiding 
or  to  escape  out  of  the  country  to  avoid  the 
subpena  that  might  force  them  to  the  alternative 
of  perjury  or  of  testifying  against  themselves. 

There  is  no  abiding  benefit  in  a  material  pros 
perity,  however  swollen,  when  its  possessors  are 
under  the  ban  of  obloquy,  when  the  organs  of 
public  opinion  are  united  in  holding  them  up  to 
scorn  and  even  to  execration,  and  when  no  voice 
is  ever  raised  in  their  defence  except  by  those 
whose  consciences  have  been  purchased  by  gifts. 
Perhaps  there  is  even  a  hint  of  hysteria  in  the 
perfervid  denunciation  of  the  criminal  rich;  but 
even  hysteria  may  have  its  significance.  A  re 
morseless  crushing  down  of  other  men  is  likely 
in  time  to  create  a  social  vacuum;  and  we  all 
know  how  hard  it  is  for  man  to  live  alone.  We 
crave,  every  one  of  us,  the  good  opinion  of  our 
fellow-men.  There  is  little  companionship  in  mere 
money.  A  man  who  has  lived  for  himself,  with 
out  service  and  without  sacrifice,  driven  by  greed 
or  impelled  by  the  sheer  exhilaration  of  the  game 
he  is  playing,  is  not  likely  to  find  much  satisfaction 
in  a  solitary  counting  up  of  the  stakes  he  has  won. 
348 


STANDARDS   OF   SUCCESS 

He  may  be  very  slow  to  make  this  discovery, 
since  he  is  likely  to  be  sheathed  in  self-esteem, 
an  almost  inevitable  accompaniment  of  a  life 
devoted  to  mere  money-making.  Here  indeed 
is  another  disadvantage  of  starting  out  with  the 
amassing  of  wealth  as  the  only  goal  of  ambition. 
If  this  heart's  desire  is  ever  attained,  it  can  only 
be  at  the  cost  of  a  disintegration  of  character. 
It  is  almost  impossible  for  any  one  who  has  heapt 
up  a  fortune  unaided  not  to  be  conceited.  While 
the  artist  and  the  author  may  have  wholesome 
doubts  as  to  the  abiding  value  of  their  works, 
the  man  who  has  made  money  can  measure  it 
with  precision.  There  it  is  before  him,  to  be 
reckoned  fairly  in  dollars  and  cents;  and  the 
simple  operation  of  elementary  addition  is  the 
solid  support  of  his  high  opinion  of  himself. 

Ill 

To  be  raised  above  immediate  want,  to  be 
well-to-do,  to  have  inherited  or  acquired  a  com 
fortable  fortune, — this  is  a  thing  not  to  be  de 
spised,  since  it  sets  us  free  for  work  more  inter 
esting  than  barren  self-support.  But  to  have 
much  more  than  this,  to  be  possest  of  immense 
wealth,  is  to  be  heavily  handicapt.  The  tale  is 
told  of  a  multi-millionaire  who  had  inherited  his 
gigantic  fortune  and  who  complained  that  he 
349 


STANDARDS   OF  SUCCESS 

had  had  no  fun  in  life.  He  is  reported  as  saying 
that  he  believed  he  had  ability  but  he  was  not 
sure,  as  he  had  had  no  chance  to  prove  it,  no  in 
centive  to  put  forth  the  best  that  was  in  him. 
His  excessive  riches  had  disqualified  him  for  tak 
ing  part  in  any  of  the  struggles  which  give  zest 
to  life,  and  he  had  found  himself  forced  into  a 
career  of  empty  idleness.  This  seems  to  be  a 
confirmation  of  a  remark  reported  to  have  been 
made  half  a  century  ago  by  the  man  who  was 
then  supposed  to  be  the  wealthiest  in  New  York, 
— to  the  effect  that  any  one  who  had  half  a  mil 
lion  "was  just  as  well  off  as  if  he  was  rich."  And 
this  again  recalls  the  remark  of  a  clever  old  lawyer 
to  a  client  of  moderate  means  whom  he  was  try 
ing  to  dissuade  from  a  risky  venture;— "There 
isn't  really  so  much  difference  between  having  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  and  having  a  million; 
but  there's  an  enormous  difference  between  hav 
ing  a  hundred  thousand  and  having  nothing  at 
all!"  After  all,  there  is  sense  in  Ben  Tonson's 
saying, — "What  need  hath  nature  of  silver  dishes, 
multitudes  of  waiters,  delicate  pages,  perfumed 
napkins?  She  requires  meat  only,  and  Hunger 
is  not  ambitious." 

Probably   many   Americans   who   have   made 

colossal  fortunes  have  not  been  urged  by  avarice, 

by  the  naked  desire  for  gain;    rather  have  they 

been  taken  captive  by  the  lure  of  the  game  itself, 

350 


STANDARDS   OF   SUCCESS 

unwilling  to  draw  out  so  long  as  they  could  sit 
in  at  the  table.  Perhaps  some  of  them  may  be 
victims  of  the  false  reasoning  which  encourages  a 
belief  that  as  a  moderate  fortune  helps  us  to  en 
joy  life,  a  fortune  ten  times  as  large  will  provide 
ten  times  as  much  enjoyment.  To  argue  in  this 
way  is  to  ignore  the  law  of  diminishing  returns; 
and  it  is  to  commit  the  grosser  blunder  of  sup 
posing  that  pleasure  can  be  bought  with  a  price. 
But  we  all  know  that  there  is  no  shop  where  pleas 
ure  is  sold, — at  least  there  is  none  where  the 
products  are  guaranteed  under  the  pure  food  law. 
Pleasure  cannot  be  purchased,  and  it  cannot  even 
be  sought  for,  with  any  chance  of  success  in  the 
pursuit.  If  we  go  gunning  for  pleasure,  we  are 
certain  to  come  home  with  an  empty  bag,  as  well 
as  with  empty  pockets;  and  the  man  who  seeks 
that  kind  of  sport  generally  starts  out  with  an 
empty  soul. 

The  truth  is  that  pleasure  is  a  by-product  of 
work.  The  man  who  has  something  to  do  that 
he  wants  to  do  intensely  and  that  he  is  able  at 
last  to  do,  gets  pleasure  as  a  fee,  as  a  tip,  as  an 
extra  allowance.  Perhaps  the  keenest  joy  in 
life  is  to  accomplish  what  you  have  long  sought 
to  do,  even  if  you  feel  that  the  result  might  be  a 
little  better  than  you  have  achieved.  Possibly 
the  most  exquisite  gratification  comes  from  the 
consciousness  of  a  good  job  well  done.  The  fool- 


STANDARDS   OF   SUCCESS 

ish  talk  about  the  "curse  of  labor"  is  responsible 
for  much  of  the  haste  to  gain  wealth  that  we  may 
retire  into  idleness.  But  if  we  are  honest  with 
ourselves  we  know  that  labor  is  never  a  curse, 
that  it  is  ever  a  blessing.  The  theory  that  work 
in  itself  is  painful,  or  that  it  is  the  duty  only  of 
inferiors,  is  essentially  aristocratic  and  funda 
mentally  feudal;  it  is  hostile  to  the  democratic 
ideal.  Work  is  what  sweetens  life  and  gives  de 
light  to  all  our  days.  That  man  is  happiest  and 
gets  the  utmost  out  of  life  who  is  neither  poor  nor 
rich  and  who  is  in  love  with  his  job,  joying  in  the 
work  that  comes  to  his  hands.  And  that  man 
is  truly  accurst  who  is  refused  the  privilege  of 
congenial  toil  because  he  has  too  much  money. 
There  is  a  significant  passage  in  one  of  the 
letters  that  Taine  wrote  toward  the  end  of  his 
well-spent  life,— an  honorable  career  which  had 
been  crowned  with  all  the  outer  rewards  of  suc 
cess.  "To  my  mind,"  he  declared,  "the  hope  of 
success,  even  success  itself,  does  not  suffice  to 
sustain  us;  man  needs  an  aim,  something  loved 
for  its  own  sake,  sometimes  money  or  high  place, 
which  is  the  case  of  ordinary  ambition ;  sometimes 
an  object  he  will  enjoy  all  by  himself,  a  science 
he  wishes  to  master,  a  problem  which  he  wishes 
to  solve  to  have  done  with  it."  The  ordinary 
ambition,  as  Taine  calls  it  here,  money  or  high 
place,  is  a  false  beacon,  and  when  he  who  is  pos- 
352 


STANDARDS   OF  SUCCESS 

sest  by  it  attains  to  his  promised  land  he  finds 
it  to  be  only  a  slough  of  despond,  if  it  has  led  him 
to  starve  his  capacity  for  getting  out  of  life  the 
things  that  are  really  worth  while.  He  may  seem 
to  have  succeeded,  but  he  is  left  lonely  amid  those 
whose  ambitions  have  been  better  inspired. 

In  spite  of  much  that  may  seem  like  evidence 
to  the  contrary,  the  American  people  as  a  whole 
are  not  now  setting  up  false  standards  of  success. 
It  is  not  true  that  they  are  drugged  with  "the 
spirit  of  mercenary  materialism."  There  is 
really  little  reason  to  believe  that  the  average 
man  here  in  the  United  States,  however  much  he 
may  wish  to  be  better  off  than  he  is,  weighs  his 
fellow-men  by  their  balance  in  the  bank.  In  fact, 
the  average  man  to-day  is  not  without  a  pretty 
high  opinion  of  those  whose  minds  are  not  set  on 
money-making;  and  he  is  in  no  danger  of  de 
nouncing  as  a  dire  failure  a  career  devoted  to  the 
loftier  things  of  life.  He  may  at  times  display 
too  much  curiosity  about  the  methods  and  the 
amassed  money  of  Mr.  Midas  and  of  Mr.  Croesus; 
but  he  does  not  reveal  any  too  great  esteem  for 
their  persons.  He  does  not  actually  envy  them, 
even  tho  he  may  wish  that  he  also  had  a  little 
more  of  the  material  prosperity  of  which  they  have 
too  much.  It  may  even  be  doubted  whether  he 
holds  them  to  have  been  more  successful  than  the 
men  whom  he  admires  as  the  leaders  of  public 

353 


STANDARDS  OF  SUCCESS 

opinion  and  as  the  possessors  of  the  things  that 
money  cannot  buy.  He  may  gossip  about  the 
latest  entertainment  or  the  latest  benefaction  of 
inordinately  wealthy  men,  but  he  does  not  set 
them  as  high  as  he  rates  certain  college  presidents, 
certain  artists,  certain  men  of  letters,  certain  in 
ventors,  whose  power  and  success  cannot  be 
measured  in  money.  He  would  not  dispute 
Bacon's  assertion  that  "no  man's  fortune  can 
be  an  end  worthy  of  the  gift  of  being  .  .  .  and 
often  the  worthiest  men  abandon  their  fortunes 
willingly  that  they  may  have  leisure  for  higher 
things." 

All  those  who  are  old  enough  to  remember 
the  funeral  of  Peter  Cooper  and  its  outpouring  of 
affectionate  regard  from  all  classes  in  the  city  he 
had  made  a  better  place  to  live  in,  will  not  need 
to  be  assured  that  the  average  American  clings 
sturdily  to  the  belief  that  public  service,  in  office 
or  out  of  it,  is  the  true  gage  of  a  life.  The  most 
useful  citizen  is  in  fact  the  most  successful;  and 
it  is  those  who  have  given  loyal  service  to  the  com 
munity  whom  the  community  holds  in  highest 
regard.  Probably  the  average  American,  if  he 
were  forced  to  give  thought  to  it,  would  admit 
willingly  that  the  unknown  settlement-workers, 
who  put  behind  them  all  desire  for  gain  and  who 
give  their  lives  gladly  to  unostentatious  service, 
have  achieved  a  fuller  measure  of  success  than 
354 


STANDARDS   OF   SUCCESS 

the  most  of  the  men  who  have  been  conspicuous 
in  amassing  millions. 

Not  what  we  have,  but  what  we  use; 
Not  what  we  see,  but  what  we  choose — 
These  are  the  things  that  mar  or  bless 
The  sum  of  human  happiness. 

Not  as  we  take,  but  as  we  give; 
Not  as  we  pray,  but  as  we  live — 
These  are  the  things  that  make  for  peace, 
Both  now  and  after  Time  shall  cease. 

(1909.) 


355 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY—  TEL.  NO.  642-3405 
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